


A Delicate Balance, Part Three

by Sondra



Series: A Delicate Balance [3]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-23
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 21:59:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sondra/pseuds/Sondra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When physical torture fails to get the information he wants from Blake, the Federation official overseeing his interrogation threatens to do likewise to two innocent children. Faced with two equally unacceptable choices, will Blake find a third? And can Avon get there in time to rescue both him and the children?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Delicate Balance, Part Three

 "Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations."--Author unknown

I

 

"On the _Zebulon_?" Servalan exclaimed in disbelief. "They left Gauda Prime on the _Zebulon_?"

"That's what my interrogators report they've both confessed."

"While we stood there and saw them off?"

"I'm afraid so, Commissioner."

"In those packing crates for Altern 5, the--what was it?--refurbished mining equipment." Servalan reiterated aloud the amazing tale she'd just been told. "Like the stunt Jarvik pulled on the _Liberator_ crew during the harvest of Kairos."

"I beg your pardon, Commissioner. Who is Jarvik?"

"Oh, never mind, Arlen. It's not important." Servalan's voice dripped with disgust. "And those two--your prisoners--served as the 'Federation escort' for the mining consortium."

"Yes, apparently."

"Using uniforms Blake and Avon stole the night they raided this base and drugged your guards."

"Yes, apparently," Arlen repeated in a more subdued tone.

"Incredible! But they won't say where Blake and Avon went after that."

"I don't believe they know, Commissioner."

"They couldn't be holding out on us?"

Arlen shook her head. "No, I don't think so. There are certain signs, you know, when someone's been--broken." Her voice dropped to a whisper; her gaze dropped to the floor.

"But then we have a paradox here, don't we? Because the _Zebulon_ blew up in flight on its way back to Ryanec 5. But Blake and Avon were positively identified as being on Helotrix some considerable time _after_ that."

"I see what you mean. How is it possible?"

"It _isn't_ possible," Servalan thundered. "Obviously. So obviously Blake and his entourage left the _Zebulon_ before the time of the accident. Unless..." Her eyes flashed with sudden insight. "Unless the _Zebulon_ never blew up in the first place. Unless the entire accident was staged." She pressed a button on her desk. "I want an immediate interstellar communications relay to the planet Ryanec 5," she instructed. "I want a direct visual and voice link with the Director of Pacifica Laboratories."

"What are you thinking, Commissioner?" Arlen asked.

Servalan signaled her to be silent as Lev Hagrim's face appeared on the vis-screen. "Good day to you, Commissioner Sleer," he greeted her. "How may I be of service? If you're wondering about that shipment of crystals, I arranged for it to be put on board the freighter _Pegasus_ this very morning."

"No, Director Hagrim. This isn't about that." An edge of impatience and irritability could be heard in Servalan's voice. "Though of course I'm pleased to hear it," she inserted hastily for form's sake. "No, this is in regard to another matter entirely. Do you have access to the files of those who serve as crew on board the ships which carry Pylene-50?"

"But of course."

"Including the _Zebulon_?"

"Naturally--although the records of deceased crew are maintained separately."

"But you could transmit a photographic image to me of--say--the late Captain Malkar?"

"You have only to ask," Hagrim said graciously.

"Consider that I just did," she snapped back.

"One moment." The Director keyed something on his computer terminal, and an instant later his image on the screen was replaced by an enlarged image of the first page of the service record of one Eban Malkar, former captain of the space freighter _Zebulon_.

The Commissioner and the Base Commander stared at it, then stared at one another. "It's not him," Arlen stammered.

"No, it certainly isn't," Servalan agreed. She signaled that she no longer needed to view the picture, and Hagrim's face reappeared.

"Was that useful?" he inquired.

"Oh, yes, indeed," she assured him. "Listen to me very carefully, Director. That man, Eban Malkar, whom we've all presumed dead, may or may not, in fact, _be_ dead, but he did not meet his death in an explosion on board the _Zebulon_ \--which may or may not, in fact, have taken place."

Hagrim frowned, trying to follow her. "I beg your pardon--Malkar may not be dead? The _Zebulon_ may not have blown up? What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the escape of the political criminal Roj Blake and his cohorts from Gauda Prime."

"Blake, you say?"

"Yes, it's a long, sad story. Right now what I need from you is an investigation into the actual fate and/or present whereabouts of the real Eban Malkar."

"The real Eban Malkar?"

"Yes, the man in the photograph. Will you stop repeating me like a Hyperphonian Echohog?"

"I'm sorry, Commissioner. I'm finding this all just a bit overwhelming."

"So am I, Hagrim," Servalan sighed. "So am I."

"Very well. I'll see what I can find out."

"Thank you, Director." Servalan terminated the link, and the screen went black.

"You didn't tell him," Arlen remarked. "You didn't tell him Blake was _on_ the _Zebulon_ when it left Gauda Prime."

"Did I not?" Servalan smiled disdainfully. "Arlen, if you ever expect to rise above your present rank, one rule you must keep in mind is: Never tell anyone anything you don't absolutely _have_ to tell them. The more you know that they don't, the safer you are."

Arlen swallowed. "I'll try to remember that, Commissioner."

Servalan rose from her seat with a flourish. "And now I think I'd like to see the prisoners," she declared.

*****

"You didn't tell her," Rella remarked. "You didn't tell Sleer we have Blake."

Hagrim smiled. "Technically speaking, we don't as yet."

"But we will when the shuttle puts down."

The Director laid his hand over that of his assistant. "Rella, my dear, these are complicated matters. Suppose the man they arrested at the spaceport turns out not to be Blake, after all. It would be embarrassing to have claimed such a coup in error."

"Yes, I see. But if it _is_ Blake--"

"If it is Blake, he's just the beginning. There are his followers to find and arrest, especially Kerr Avon. After he tells us where they are and I have the whole lot in custody, _then_ I'll tell Sleer--present them to her like a platter of Feldon crystals. That will be much more impressive, don't you think?" Rella nodded. "Now," Hagrim said, changing the subject, "I need to send a couple of men into the city to check out the Malkar household. Summon whoever is next on the duty roster."

"I remember Mrs. Malkar," Rella said, as she checked the roster. "How sad it was when we broke the news to her. She was left with four children to raise all by herself, one just a baby. And now Sleer says her husband may not be dead, after all."

"I wouldn't count too heavily on that if I were you," Hagrim mused. "If someone went to the trouble of planting a bogus Captain Malkar on board the _Zebulon_ , I don't imagine they left the real one alive to pop up somewhere and talk about it."

"Oh, right. Oh, I see what you mean." Rella pushed a button to access the public address system. "Troopers Anselm and Kraaft, please report to the Director's office at once. Repeat: Troopers Anselm and Kraaft. You're needed in the Director's office immediately." She switched off the PA system and turned back to Hagrim.

"When they get here, instruct them to take my private air car and proceed to the Malkar residence. The address is in the file. They're to represent themselves as paying a follow-up courtesy call to the widow of a Federation hero. They're to inquire in a general way as to how she and the children are managing, but not to let on that we suspect her husband did not die in the manner previously reported. They're to look for any signs in the house or in her manner that might indicate that _she's_ aware of this--anomaly."

"Sir?" Rella questioned.

"A slim chance, I grant you, and a distasteful avenue to pursue, but we must cover all the possibilities."

"Yes, Sir." Rella continued recording Hagrim's instructions.

"Then they're to report back to me," he concluded. "That will be all." She nodded and headed for the door. "Oh, and Rella--" She turned back expectantly. "Be sure to let me know when the shuttle puts down."

After she'd gone, Hagrim entered a code on the interoffice communicator. "Security Duty Station," he said, "this is the Director. We're about to receive a very important prisoner. Prepare a cell in the detention wing, and make sure the interrogation chamber is ready for him."

*****

In the interrogation chamber of the Federation base on Gauda Prime, Servalan stood over the naked, battered bodies of a man and a woman. The bodies looked like they had no business still being alive, yet the souls inhabiting them were breathing. And if they'd had any pangs of modesty over appearing this way before her or each other, that modesty had long since fallen victim to the extremity of their suffering. Now they huddled together for simple warmth and human solace.

Servalan drew her gun, and the woman on the floor began to weep softly, her tears mingling with the encrusted blood covering her face. The man made a feeble attempt to comfort her, as he shivered uncontrollably. "It's--the--cold," he whispered through cracked lips.

Servalan laughed mockingly. "A little late to be playing the hero, don't you think?" She primed her weapon for firing.

"It's the cold," he insisted again through broken teeth, glaring at her. "Not--not afraid."

"I'll remember to tell Blake when I see him that you weren't afraid," Servalan continued to taunt. "Hok, isn't it? And Magda? How about you, Magda? Any message for your beloved leader?"

With great difficulty, Magda formed the words, "I'm--sorry." The timbre of her voice and the blood oozing from her mouth suggested that a cracked rib had punctured her lung.

"You're sorry! How touching! Do you imagine he'll forgive you for betraying him? That he'll understand weakness like yours?"

"Yes!" The force of her reply made Servalan flinch. Magda was suddenly aflame with passion, and it gave her enough energy to push herself onto her knees. "Oh, yes," she breathed. "It's only strength like yours he can't understand and will never suffer to flourish anywhere in the galaxy!"

Infuriated, Servalan fired at point blank range. Magda crumpled to the floor, a huge gaping hole where her face had been.

Hok caught her body as it fell and cradled it in his lap without a trace of disgust or revulsion. He was still shivering, but now Servalan understood that he'd spoken the truth about the cause of that shivering, and the terror she wanted him to feel, the terror he refused to feel, bounced back off his impervious soul and filled hers. So she freed herself from it the only way she knew how--with the force of a second blast...

"Pathetic children!" she hissed, looking down at the mutilated corpses. She gave them each a parting kick, but as she walked from the room, she couldn't shake the feeling they'd escaped her in the end.

*****

Vila Restal sat at Orac's worktable, nervously eyeing his chrono. He'd glanced at it a half dozen times in as many minutes. He was uneasy about the fact that Blake and Avon weren't back yet, but no one else seemed concerned. At least no one else had voiced their concern to him. With a sudden firm nod, indicating decisiveness, he inserted Orac's activator key.

*Yes, what do you want?* the computer demanded irritably.

"I want to know if the _Aguilar_ took off as scheduled from the Ryanec spaceport."

There was a brief interlude of uninformative ticking, then Orac said, *According to the computer at the spaceport, the _Aguilar_ 's departure has been delayed for thirty minutes.*

"Oh." Vila nodded. "Why?" he inquired.

*Another flight was given priority--the space freighter _Pegasus_ bound for Gauda Prime.*

"Gauda Prime, eh? Small galaxy, innit? Well, that explains why Avon isn't here yet. But why isn't Blake here? Blake should have teleported back as soon as he gave Avon the bracelet. Of course, knowing Blake, he might have decided to hang around until Avon was safely on board. And if takeoff was delayed, maybe boarding was delayed, too. Then again, on the other hand--"

"Talking to yourself again, Vila?" teased a gentle voice from behind him.

The thief jumped. "Mirabel! You shouldn't sneak up on people like that. You nearly gave me a fatal case of permanent cardiac arrest. Hullo, Mara."

"Hi, Vila," the little girl said brightly, clinging to her mother's hand.

"Hullo, JoJo," said Vila to the baby in Mirabel's other arm. That one answered with a cranky wail.

"He's teething," the woman offered in explanation. Then, "I was wondering if you could do me a favor, Vila."

"Such as?"

"Such as teleport me back to my house for a short while."

The thief stared at her in astonishment. "Are you serious? Avon would have my head."

"Avon isn't here."

"Well, he will be--almost any minute now--I hope. And Blake--Blake would have my head."

"I thought Blake had gone to meet Avon."

"Who told you that?"

"No one, but Ved overheard Dayna and Tarrant talking about it. Look, we're leaving soon. You know that."

"I know you're going to join your husband."

"Yes, and Blake said we could go right after Avon returns, so it will be _very_ soon."

"Yes, so?"

"So I just want to pick up a few things from the house to take with us. Is that so unreasonable?"

"Yes.  I mean, no. I mean--I don't know _what_ I mean."

Mirabel let go of Mara's hand and put JoJo down on the floor. "It won't take long," she argued, leaning across the table to make eye contact with him. "I don't want much--just one or two items of sentimental value. We left there so quickly the day we came here, you know, and once we leave Ryanec, we can never return--"

Vila looked at her guiltily. "Yes, I know, but still--"

"It's toys for the children mostly," Mirabel pleaded. "Mara's Ilyrian Princess doll and JoJo's stuffed wuffleby. You know how it is at their age, don't you, to have a favorite toy you like to sleep with and how scary it is to be without it when you're in a strange place. And they've never been on a spaceship before. Ved and Gar are old enough to be looking forward to the adventure of it, but these two--"

Vila's features contorted in conflict, the child deep within him remembering a fuzzy brown "wuffleby" of his own and the comfort it had brought him on many a dark and fearsome night. Truth to tell, there were _still_ times he felt a momentary craving for his "wuffleby" when facing one form of darkness or another... "But if we could just wait till Blake or Avon gets here to authorize it," he bartered weakly, knowing he had already capitulated.

"You said yourself they'd never allow it," Mirabel pressed. "Oh, come on, Vila, we'll be back in no time."

" _We_? You want to take the _children_?"

"Well, JoJo's been so cranky--he hasn't wanted to let me out of his sight all day. And Mara says she knows just where her doll is, only she can't describe it in words, and _I've_ no _idea_ where it is. Look, the boys will still be here, so you don't have to worry that we won't come back. I mean, you know I wouldn't leave them, don't you?"

Vila squeezed his eyes shut tightly for a moment, then exhaled explosively. "Okay, okay, I'll do it."

"Oh, thank you, Vila." Mirabel planted a quick kiss on his cheek, grabbed a couple of teleport bracelets from the rack and started fastening one around Mara's wrist.

"You're sure you know how to use them?" the thief asked.

"Uh-huh." She slapped the second bracelet around her own wrist, picked up her son and headed for the teleport platform.

"Well, how are you going to carry stuff when you have to hold the baby with both hands?"

"I told you. I only want a couple of things. Mara can carry her toy and JoJo's, and if there's anything else, I'll tie it up in a bag and tie it around my waist." She stepped onto the platform, gave her daughter a fistful of her skirt to clutch and wrapped her arms around her son the way Blake had instructed her to do that first time.

Vila stole another anxious glance at his chrono, calculating the extra time the delay of the _Aguilar_ 's departure might give them. _Or might not_. "Ten minutes," he declared sharply, trying to sound authoritative.

"Fifteen," Mirabel flung back, unimpressed.

"Fifteen," he conceded. "But not a nanosecond more. And neither of you takes off those bracelets, understand?"

Mirabel nodded her agreement. "Do it, Vila," she said. "Put us across."

"Orac," the thief directed glumly, "set teleport coordinates for the inside of the Malkar residence." He kept his eyes on the control panel until the desired coordinates were locked in. "Putting you across now," he said with a sigh.

*****

They materialized in the living room where she'd first laid eyes on him: the mysterious scarred stranger who had mutated from menace to messenger to savior in a matter of mere minutes...

And this was the home she'd shared with Eban in love and harmony (and blissful ignorance) a couple of lifetimes ago. She let her eyes drink in every centimeter of the room, knowing she'd never see it again, then shook herself in disciplined recollection of the time constraint.

"The doll, Mara," she said softly. "Show me where it is."

She followed her daughter upstairs, still carrying JoJo. He'd stopped fussing the moment they'd arrived on familiar ground, but when they reached the top of the staircase, he began to scream hysterically. The beam which had fallen from the ceiling still lay in the hallway, and Mirabel realized that her son was reliving the fright of having been trapped in his crib during the tremor. She soothed him as best she could, beckoning to Mara to speed up their search. The little girl headed confidently towards her room and in minutes had retrieved her beloved doll from beneath a pile of assorted toys and trinkets. That left only the baby's stuffed animal.

As the three of them stood in the doorway to the nursery, Mirabel saw for the first time the badly shattered window and the pieces of glass all over the room. "Mara, wait for Mama downstairs," she instructed. JoJo had stopped crying, but was now clinging to his mother in mute terror. "It's all right, baby," she whispered, kissing him. She stepped cautiously over the threshold and looked around.

The wuffleby--a native Ryanec mammal, roughly equivalent in size and shape to a Terran rabbit--was lying in a corner of JoJo's crib. Gingerly Mirabel picked her way across the floor to get it, sidestepping potential splinters.

Back in the hall, she gave JoJo his toy and felt his rigid little body begin to relax. By the time they were back downstairs, he was stroking the simulated fur and making small sounds of contentment. Mara was over by the window, looking out into the street. "Come away from there, sweetheart," Mirabel called. "We have to go back now." She had arrived with the intention of retrieving some sentimental treasures of her own, but now it all felt too overwhelming, and she just wanted to get back to Gar and Ved and to feel that much closer to the reunion they would all soon have with Eban. "I said, get away from the window, Mara," she repeated more sternly.

The child turned to face her. "But there's an air car outside, Mama," she said, "and two men with uniforms are coming to visit us."

*****

Soolin found Vila hunched over the teleport controls with his eyes glued to his chrono, silently mouthing numbers. "What's happening?" she demanded. "Did one of them give you a standby order?"

"Eh?" mumbled the thief.

"Blake or Avon," the woman clarified. "Which one is it?"

"Oh, no, I haven't heard from Blake or Avon," Vila told her. "It's Mirabel."

"MIRABEL!" she exploded. "What do you mean it's Mirabel? Vila, what the hell have you done?"

*****

Mirabel peered out the window and gasped to see the official vehicle of the Director of Pacifica Laboratories sitting in the middle of the street. Two Federation troopers whose uniforms bore Pacifica insignia were, indeed, headed for their doorstep. She couldn't imagine why--in fact, she couldn't think at all.

Her heart began to race in her chest, and she was operating on pure instinct as she jerked her daughter to the center of the room. She fumbled with the button on her teleport bracelet, momentarily forgetting in her panic which way to turn it. "Vila," she whispered hoarsely. "Vila, bring us back." A sudden pounding on the door made her freeze in her tracks. "Now, Vila!" she screamed. "Bring us back now!"

It was at that very moment that she caught sight of Mara's bracelet hanging open on her daughter's wrist. As she reached out to refasten it, it came off into her hand. But in trying to help Mara, she'd inadvertently loosened her grip on the baby as well.

A moment later one very hysterical mother materialized alone on the teleport platform...

And back in the living room of the Malkar home, two very baffled Federation officers were staring down at two very bewildered children. "Well, well," said Trooper Kraaft, looking at Trooper Anselm, "what have we here?"

*****

"Oh, no!" wailed Vila, turning a sickening shade of green.

Soolin pressed the alarm button, setting off a series of klaxons eerily reminiscent of the ones which had greeted the _Scorpio_ crew upon their arrival at Blake's Gauda Prime base. From all directions, the other members of the group swiftly converged upon the site of the emergency.

"Put me back!" Mirabel was screaming in despair. "Put me back now!"

"No way," Soolin snapped. "Vila, how could you be so stupid?"

"She wanted to collect some toys. I thought it would be all right."

"You didn't think at all. If you had, you'd have at least sent one of us with her." She was strapping on her gun and gesturing to the newly-arrived Dayna to do the same.

"You can't leave my children there!" Mirabel cried. "There were Federation troopers knocking at the door."

"We're not leaving your children there," Soolin said, ripping Mara's bracelet from her mother's hand. "But _we're_ going back for them, not you." Then she roughly pulled off Mirabel's bracelet as well and clipped it around her own wrist.

Dayna had already armed and braceleted herself. The two women mounted the teleport platform together, their weapons drawn and primed for firing.

"Please," Mirabel whimpered, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Please don't scare them."

"Mother, what happened?" exclaimed Ved's voice as he and his younger brother arrived on the scene. Mirabel just hugged them to her wordlessly.

Tarrant and Deva and Docholli were likewise trying to piece it all together.

"All right, Vila," Soolin directed, "put us across."

As the thief moved to obey, another voice cut across the communications channel. "Base, this is Avon. I need teleport now."

Vila frowned in non-recognition. "Who...?"

"Vila!" Docholli called sharply and gestured towards his own throat.

"Oh, oh, right," the thief said, remembering.

"Vila!" Soolin growled impatiently.

"Vila, is that you, you fifth-grade ignorant?" thundered Avon. "I need teleport now."

"Uh, yes, Avon, it's me," he stammered. "But we have a problem here."

"We certainly do," shouted the disembodied voice, "and you can't _begin_ to imagine what it is. Now, I don't care what else is going on back there. _My_ order takes priority. Lock onto my signal and teleport me now."

"Just a minute," Vila sighed, waving Soolin and Dayna off the platform. He moved off the coordinates set for Mirabel's house and picked up Avon instead.

"Not before time," snarled the man, as he rematerialized and came leaping off the teleport platform. "We were about to leave planetary orbit. Two more minutes and I'd have been out of range."

Instantly Soolin rushed up to reconfigure the coordinates, then rushed back to join Dayna on the platform. "Where the hell are _they_ going?" demanded the new arrival, as the women disappeared from sight.

"Who the hell is _that_?" Mirabel shrieked, staring at the unfamiliar visage.

"Oh, that's Avon," Vila said off-handedly.

"Avon!" she gasped. "It _can't_ be Avon!"

"I repeat, where are they going?"

"To Mirabel's house," Tarrant answered, having figured it out. "Vila teleported Mirabel and two of the children over there, and the children got left behind somehow."

"Vila did _what_?" Avon bellowed, grabbing the thief by the collar and hauling him to his feet.

"Yes it can," Mirabel sighed, changing her mind.

A minute later Dayna and Soolin called for teleport. But when they rematerialized, they were alone. "Too late," Soolin reported grimly. "There wasn't a trace of anyone in the house."

"And the air car?" Mirabel said anxiously. "The Pacifica air car the troopers arrived in?"

Soolin shook her head. "They must have collected the children and left with them."

A strangled moan escaped from Mirabel's lips. She sank to the floor in a semi-faint. Docholli rushed to her side, as did Dayna. Ved and Gar hovered nervously, wracked with concern for their mother and fear for their siblings. "She's going to be fine, boys," Docholli reassured them. "But, Ved, I think it would be best if you took your brother back to your quarters."

"But--"

"We'll let you know the minute there's any news," the doctor promised.

"Come on, Ved," Dayna coaxed, relying on his feelings for her to render him receptive. "I'll go with you." That seemed to work. Docholli nodded approvingly as Dayna ushered both boys away from the emotional scene.

Soolin had now brought a glass of water, and Mirabel, still on the floor, was sipping it. "What am I going to do?" she murmured brokenly.

"Try not to worry," Soolin urged, helping her to her feet. "Blake will think of something." She looked around. "Where is Blake, by the way?"

"That's the problem I was alluding to," Avon replied, and as he pulled the second teleport bracelet off his ankle, the room grew silent with foreboding. "Hagrim's people have Blake," he said, turning the dread of anticipation into the dread of black certainty.

"What?" cried Tarrant.

"How?" cried Docholli.

"Where?" cried Vila.

"At the spaceport," Avon answered.

"You were with him?" All eyes turned at the rising note of accusation in Deva's voice. He kept moving forward until he stood nose to nose with the man he was addressing. "You let them take Blake?"

The anger that Avon had expressed towards Vila moments earlier paled to insignificance beside the anger which filled his face now. He reached out and seized Deva by the throat. "I didn't _let_ them take Blake!" he shouted.

Soolin interposed herself between the two men. "We know that, Avon," she said soothingly, laying her hand on that part of his upper arm which had once borne witness to just how far he'd been prepared to go _not_ to let someone 'take Blake.' "We know that," she repeated. "Don't we, Deva?" But her other hand hovered centimeters above the gun in her holster, just in case.

"I suppose," Deva mumbled.

"No supposing about it," Soolin insisted firmly.

Her lover nodded, and Avon slowly released his pressure on the man's throat. The room breathed a silent, collective sigh of relief.

"I didn't _let_ them take Blake," Avon said again. " _Blake_ let them take Blake. He could have teleported out of there at any time. He chose not to."

"For heaven's sake, why?" Tarrant exclaimed.

"To safeguard the bloody mission. Why else?"

Soolin looked up from reassuring herself that the marks Avon's fingers had left on Deva's neck were superficial. "I don't understand," she said.

Everyone moved into a closer, tighter circle around Avon as he explained. "We were trapped in a storage area. We could have _both_ teleported out, but Blake insisted on buying time for me to carry out the final phase of the plan. He used himself as a decoy so that I could slip away unnoticed, so that Dr. Ari Janssen could board the _Aguilar_."

A mournful silence blanketed the room as each individual struggled privately to come to terms with what they were being told. "That's got to be a first--even for Blake," Vila declared finally.

"Yes, well--" Avon started--and stopped as his eyes met Mirabel's. "Why is she still here?" he snarled. "Why is she being allowed to listen to this?"

"Oh, come on, Avon, have half a heart," Vila pleaded. "Her children--"

"If you'd had half a _brain_ , we wouldn't have that additional complication," was the chilling rejoinder.

"Avon," spoke up Docholli, "when the troopers appeared at her house, she ran _from_ them, not _to_ them. Doesn't that tell you something?"

"It tells me she's not stupid," Avon answered. "She knew her other two children were still in our custody and that we had--as we've always had--the power to order her husband's execution."

If he expected the implied threat to intimidate her, he had another thing coming. Mirabel looked him straight in the eye and said, "You're despicable."

He raised his eyebrows at the insult and smiled with an air of patronizing amusement. Then he keyed Orac. "Orac, have you erased Ari Janssen's name from the passenger manifest on the _Aguilar_?"

*Yes, of course,* the computer responded.

Mirabel followed him to the worktable. "You said Hagrim's people have Blake."

"So?"

"Hagrim's people also have my children."

Their eyes met again, and he knew what she was thinking. "Orac, tap into the civil police computer," he instructed, "I want to know if there have been any reports of lost children taken into police custody within the past hour or so--that is to say, children found alone without adult supervision. And if there have been, compare the descriptions of any such children with your knowledge of Mara and Jorum Malkar."

A minute later in real time--an eternity later in mother time--Orac responded. *No children matching the description of Mara or Jorum Malkar are registered in the police computer in the manner specified.*

"You see?" Mirabel reacted to the news. "They didn't take them to the station."

Avon shook his head. "It's too soon to be certain of that. I'll have Orac check again after Docholli and I are finished."

"Finished?"

"Finished restoring me to my former self. Orac will be needed during the surgery."

"You want to have the surgery now?" Docholli echoed in surprise.

"I expect I'll be returning to Pacifica," Avon stated drily. "I can't do it with this face or this voice." He turned from the doctor to the group as a whole. "All right, everyone, listen carefully. Docholli and I are going up to the Medical Unit now. Soolin, too, if that will speed things along any." He paused just long enough to take note of the cybersurgeon's nod that it would and her answering nod of consent. "As soon as I'm conscious again, we'll need to hold a meeting, as you've all some serious decisions to make."

"You mean whether we stay or skedaddle." Ever practical, Vila voiced what the others were trying not to even think.

"Daintily put," Avon murmured.

" _I'm_ not going _anywhere_!" Mirabel said fiercely.

"We will discuss it later," Avon repeated. "Also after the surgery, I want to see if Orac can open a window for us into Pacifica. I'd like to do that now, but even Orac can't be two places at once, and logic dictates that the sooner I have the surgery, the sooner I'll be functional again."

"Avon, if you're thinking of cutting your recuperation period as short as you cut it last time--" Docholli started.

"No, Doctor--shorter," came the brusque reply.

"I don't think that's a wise idea."

"I don't recall asking you."

"Avon, it's my job to--"

"It's your job to get me looking and sounding like myself again, then to get me on my feet and keep me on my feet--whatever it takes for as long as it takes."

Docholli heaved a sigh. "All right." He turned to his one-time assistant. "Soolin?"

She turned and put her arms around Deva. "You going to be all right by yourself for a few hours?"

He gave her a kiss. "I'll be fine. You just concentrate on helping Docholli to help Avon to help Blake."

"What's Blake facing, Avon--really?" Tarrant asked now.

Something in the pilot's tone rubbed Avon the wrong way. "More than you could," he sneered.

"Think you could tone down the insults and manage to be a little more factual?"

Avon glared at him, his hands clutching Orac's casing so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "Pacifica has state-of-the-art interrogation facilities," he said grimly. "Their inventory of equipment is small, but complete. They have drugs, neural amplifiers, electroshock devices--in short, the works. Is that factual enough for you, Tarrant?" As he turned to move away from the table, his foot bumped into the leg of a chair. He responded by kicking the leg so hard that it splintered, and the chair fell apart.

Eyes stared in astonishment and mouths fell open, but he just picked up Orac and carried it down the corridor towards the _Zebulon_. Docholli and Soolin followed. Tarrant left to find and brief Dayna, and Deva left to be alone with his fears and prayers for Blake.

Mirabel looked at Vila. "What's with Avon?" she asked. "He's behaving almost as if--"

"He cares?" the thief finished. "Of course he cares. Avon can't stand the thought of anyone hurting Blake." He gave a little chuckle. "No, hurting Blake is one prerogative Avon reserves exclusively for himself."

*****

On the air car back to Pacifica, JoJo lay sleeping in Trooper Kraaft's lap, his wuffleby clutched tightly to his chest. Mara sat at the trooper's feet, playing with her doll, while Trooper Anselm piloted the vehicle. "I have to hand it to you, Kraaft," Anselm marveled, eyeing the idyllic scene through his rear-view mirror. "You've got a way with kids."

"Well, my own aren't far from the ages of these two," Kraaft replied. "Just hope the little one won't need changing till we get him to the nursery. I don't recall seeing diapers in our first aid kit back there."

Mara looked up warily. "There are diapers in Roj's house," she said. "That's where my Mama went when she disappeared."

"Yes, sweetheart, tell us again about how that happened," Kraaft invited.

Mara sighed the way children that age will when they think the adults around them are being particularly obtuse. " _My_ bracelet came loose," she related, "and Mama tried to fix it, but then Vila must have pressed the button on the travel machine too fast because Mama went back to Roj's house, but JoJo and I didn't." She sighed again. "Mama must be awful worried about us."

"Yes, well, we'd like to take you back to her, but we don't know how, you see. We don't know where this Roj lives."

Mara shook her head. "Neither do we."

"But you say you've been staying in his house for a long time--you and your mother and JoJo and your two older brothers."

"Yes. But it isn't a house exactly."

"Well, what is it exactly?" The note of exasperation in his voice brought tears to her eyes, and he reached over to comfort her. "No, no, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you."

"Some imagination that one has," Anselm commented.

"I'm not so sure," Kraaft said thoughtfully. "Mara, can you describe this man Roj for me?"

"He's big," the child stated, illustrating with her hands. "And he has curly hair and a big boo-boo over his eye."

Anselm chuckled. "She's having you on, I tell you, Pal."

"And the others, Roj's family--what are their names again?"

"Well, I don't know _all_ their names," the girl recited didactically. "I mostly know Roj and Vila and Doc Lee and the brown lady Dayna on account of she was sick when I was.  Vila's the uncle--he mostly tells stories and does magic tricks--"

"Magic tricks like operating the travel machine," Kraaft put in.

"No, Silly, that's for _real_ ," Mara insisted.

"Stories, Pal--she tells stories," Anselm inserted, with a wink.

"And Doc Lee is the grandfather, and Dayna is the big sister. Oh, and there's the mean one, Roj's brother. They fight and they fight and they FIGHT. But not for awhile now. The mean one went away."

"That's good," commented Kraaft, "I guess." Anselm kept shaking his head.

"There's another lady--I don't remember her name, and a man--no, two men--I don't remember their names either. And Mama and Ved and Gar and JoJo and me!" She looked up, smiling brightly. "Oh, I almost forgot. They have A Rack."

"A rack?" Kraaft repeated.

"Yes, A Rack with flashing lights and a funny voice."

Now Trooper Anselm was laughing uncontrollably. "Hey, Kraaft, sounds like something we ought to tell interrogation division about."

"Oh, be quiet. That's not funny. Pay attention to the sky. Do you want to have an accident?"

"I'm sorry," Anselm apologized, sobering up.

"Interrogation division's nothing to joke about," Kraaft persisted. "Do you know how lucky we are that we've never pulled duty there while anyone was actually in detention?"

"Can't remember the last time anybody _was_ in detention," Anselm replied. "Well, here we are." He flipped a switch on his instrument panel. "Pacifica Prime to LandingBay. Request clearance to come down."

"Clearance granted, Pacifica Prime," responded a computerized voice. "Please note a shuttle is in dock at grid reference 47 zed."

"Thank you, LandingBay. Pacifica Prime out." He switched off the communicator and began his descent. "What did it think I was going to do--put down on top of the bloody thing?"

"It's a computer, Anselm," Kraaft said whimsically. "It doesn't realize we have eyes."

The air car touched down and glided smoothly into its slot beside the shuttle. Anselm cut the engines. "Home, sweet home," he declared. "Time to report to the Director and see what _he_ makes of Mara's little fairy tale."

*****

Blake couldn't stop screaming. Back at the spaceport, while he thought that Avon might still be within hearing range, he had managed to ride out the blows of his captors in silence. Now, lying naked and helpless on the cold, concrete floor of the interrogation room at Pacifica, that was no longer necessary.

Which was just as well--because it was also no longer possible.

Hagrim's chief interrogator--a professional called Berberon--was running a neural amplifier over badly bruised kidneys: the legacy of the overenthusiastic "amateurs" who'd arrested him. He'd been pumped full of stimulants before they began to insure he would not escape into unconsciousness, and that gave Berberon license to turn up the power settings on his instrument with impunity.

There were two others assisting the chief interrogator. Their principal job was to hold the victim still--no easy task despite his being shackled hand and foot, for his body arced wildly each time the amplifier assailed his nerve endings with messages of excruciating pain.

When they were finished with his lower back, they turned their attention to the series of circular blisters covering his abdomen and running up and down his rib cage. These were the result of an earlier "session" in which electric shock had been the torture of choice. Painful enough on their own, they became pinpoints of searing hellfire when Berberon aimed his neural amplifier at them, and Blake's whole body quivered with uncontrollable dread each time he heard the whining sound which signaled the selection of a new power setting.

Unlike the troopers at the spaceport, these three were smooth professionals. They went about their task with methodical precision and cold detachment, neither pleasured nor perturbed by the agony they were orchestrating. As if they'd done this sort of thing hundreds of times before. Obviously trained in the pre-Pylene-50 era of interrogation.

They'd tried that on him, too, of course. Sometime between the assault he'd managed to endure without a whimper and this all-but-unbearable one. From what he could surmise, it had been the genuine article, taken from their own private stock of pre-Ari Janssen vintage. He didn't tell them they were wasting their time. He let them discover that for themselves--regarded the interlude of their "discovery" as time gained to reduce the unavoidable time of his suffering until Avon came back for him, every precious, pain-free second welcomed and cherished...

But that seemed a millennium ago and a galaxy away as one of Berberon's assistants executed a well-placed kick to the groin. That actually stopped his screaming briefly by robbing him of breath--then unleashed a long, undulating encore of it as the neural amplifier, set to maximum, was brought to bear on the injured organ. "Just tell us what we want to know, and we'll stop," a sweetly reasonable voice offered.

If his hands had not been manacled behind his back, Blake would have used them to close his ears to that tempting voice. Instead he simply closed his mind to it. And focused his attention on the sound of his own vibrating vocal cords. The interrogators viewed a prisoner's outcries as their ally. They believed it frightened and humiliated a man to hear himself out of control that way. But they hadn't factored in Blake's uncanny ability to find the silver lining in the darkest storm cloud. Blake was listening to his screams and thinking: Good. As long as I'm screaming, I can't be talking.

Later, back in his cell, sobbing uncontrollably until exhaustion stayed his tears, that unique optimism became gratitude for the method of torture they'd employed. Neural amplifiers permitted maximum pain to be wrung from minimum injury. For all his suffering, Blake remained relatively undamaged and reckoned that would really pay off when Avon returned to rescue him...

But in the meanwhile, there was only the waiting and enduring. Even in the intervals between "sessions" (and he'd long since lost track of how many "sessions" there'd been), the respite from pain was strictly relative. They never took off the shackles--which had been deliberately tightened till the metal cut into his skin. They never gave him a sip of water or tended his festering burns. They just threw him into the cell, and however he landed was how he was left till the next summons came to return to the chamber for more "questioning."

"You're getting too old for this, Roj," he quipped as he tried to figure out whether the pain was _really_ worse this time or whether it only seemed so because "this time" was the freshest in his memory. The cell reeked of vomit and excrement, though the odors were gradually starting to fade because it had been hours since he'd had anything left in him to expel from either orifice. He was still producing urine though, and it was still heavily streaked with blood.

He had no idea if it was day or night, and the disorientation produced by that ignorance was another traditional tool of the torturer, but a futile one in his case, as his years in space had well-accustomed him to living without those reference points.

Still there would be a certain utility in knowing, in being able to calculate how much time had elapsed since his capture because that would provide some means of estimating when Avon might be in a position to mount a rescue. _If_ Avon chose to mount a rescue. If he didn't opt to take the _Zebulon_ and run for safety...

And he couldn't really blame the man if that _were_ his decision. Avon had responsibility for the lives of the others now. Avon couldn't afford to let sentiment cloud his judgment. When all was said and done, he wouldn't _want_ Avon to let sentiment cloud his judgment. Of course _he_ knew that he constituted no threat to their safety, that he would never give them away, that Hagrim's butchers couldn't force him to. Not without the mind scanner...

AND HE'D SEEN THE BLOODY CONTRAPTION, TOO, STANDING IMPOTENT IN THE INTERROGATION CHAMBER, BUT HE'D FORCED HIMSELF NOT TO LOOK AT IT, NOT TO LET ON TO HIS TORMENTORS THAT THE VERY SIGHT OF IT FILLED HIM WITH TERROR, EVEN KNOWING IT WAS IMPOTENT (AND, OF COURSE, HE WASN'T _SUPPOSED_ TO KNOW THAT) BECAUSE THEN THEY MIGHT THINK TO STRAP HIM INTO IT ANYWAY, AND HE REALLY DIDN'T WANT TO TEST HIS NERVE AGAINST THAT PROSPECT, HE REALLY DIDN'T...

Yes, _he_ knew Hagrim's torturers would never force him to betray his people, but he couldn't expect _Avon_ to know that. Avon's view of the universe had no room in it for faith of that calibre. But it had contained one surprise, all the same--one wonderful, heart-stirring, soul-soothing surprise--the memory of which even now, even here, possessed the power to lift him beyond his throbbing flesh: "If something goes wrong, Blake, and I can't get back for you in time, I'll stay with the others--like before."

"I'll stay with the others... I'll stay with the others... I'll stay with the others." He heard it over and over again inside his head--and inside his heart. It became his anchor in a sea of pain, his lifeline to the world outside this dungeon he might never live to leave. It became his "wuffleby."

Oh, but Avon _would_ get back in time, and then everything would be all right. He repeated it to himself reassuringly like a mantram: _When Avon comes back for me. When Avon comes back for me. When Avon comes back for me_...

And if not? If that "judgment call" went the other way? Again, the voice of memory: "You _didn't_ , Blake, you _didn't_ ask it." A smile formed on his lips, and Blake sighed with a contentment no violence could mar, a certainty solid as herculaneum and luminescent as the stars. Yes, even if Avon _didn't_ come back for him, everything that truly mattered was going to be all right.

 

II

 

"Blake!" Avon woke with a start and sat bolt upright in his bed in the Medical Unit. Instantly Soolin and Docholli were at his side.

"It's all right, Avon," the woman said soothingly, sponging the sweat off his face--and it was _his_ face again--"It's all right. The operation's over. Everything went as it should."

He looked dazed for a moment, pushed her hand away, and felt the contours of his remolded flesh, wincing softly. "Over, you say?" The words sounded like a croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Yes, it would seem--it would seem--what the hell is the matter with my voice?"

"Your vocal cords are still swollen," Docholli answered. "But the analyzer confirms that the original configuration of the underlying voice pattern has been restored. You're just hoarse, that's all. It's purely temporary."

"How long?"

"Well, I can't say, exactly--"

"No--how long have I been out?"

Docholli and Soolin exchanged glances of trepidation. "About twelve hours," the surgeon replied.

" _Twelve hours_!"  He flung aside the sheets, swung his legs onto the floor--and promptly reeled with dizziness.

"Not so fast," Docholli admonished, easing him back against the pillow.

"I told you," he protested weakly, despising both the vertigo and the fact that his voice couldn't summon its usual power. "I told you not to let me sleep any longer than necessary."

"In my judgment, it was necessary," the doctor declared.

"Blake..." moaned the man in the bed, thrashing from side to side, "Blake..."

Soolin shifted uneasily, fearing that Avon would never forgive her or Docholli for witnessing this display of vulnerability.

"You promised," he rasped. "You promised to get me on my feet and keep me going till I can get Blake."

That wasn't quite how Docholli remembered it, but he didn't argue. "There's a drug I can give you," he said now. "I couldn't risk it if I hadn't let you sleep that extra time. I'm still not crazy about the idea, but at least this way it might work without killing you."

"What drug?"

"Something the Federation was experimenting with a few years back to keep soldiers going during prolonged battles. I took a sample with me when I ran, kept it with me all this time, brought it on board the _Zebulon_ when we first took her over. I've never actually used it on anyone, but if you're not allergic to it and it doesn't burn out your brain before you finish metabolizing it, it just might enable you to function for the next 24-48 hours as if you hadn't just come through major surgery."

"And after that?" Soolin queried.

"I don't know," Docholli said.

Avon thrust out his arm. "Do it!" he hissed.

Moments later the rest of the group and Mirabel were astonished to see him come walking into the ship's lounge, escorted, but unassisted, by the pair who had operated on him.

Orac was there as well, and Avon's first question was, "Did anyone think to have it check the police computer again?"

"Just as soon as you were finished with it in there," Deva reported.

"And?"

Deva shook his head, as Dayna reached over and gave Mirabel's hand a squeeze.

"Damn!" Avon cursed, taking a seat which put him directly across from her. "Why aren't you with the children?" he asked crossly.

"Because _those_ children are all right," she shot back. "At least as all right as they can be, worried sick about where their brother and sister are and what's happening to them."

"Mara and JoJo will be okay," Vila said. "I'm sure they will."

"Like you were sure they'd be okay at the house?" Dayna sneered.

"They're a couple of babies," the thief insisted. "No one's going to hurt a couple of babies--I bet even Servalan wouldn't." He frowned. "Mind you, I wouldn't bet anything valuable." Mirabel moaned. "But that's just Servalan," he assured her. "Servalan's nowhere near this planet."

"Actually, I'm not worried about JoJo, but I am concerned about Mara." All eyes turned towards Avon in bewilderment.

"You think they'd draw the line at hurting an infant?" Tarrant questioned.

"You fool!" came the response. "I'm not concerned about what anyone's going to _do_ to Mara. I'm concerned about what _she's_ in a position to do to _us_!"

The pilot rolled his eyes. "I might have known."

"What _Mara_ can do?" the girl's mother sniffed disbelievingly.

"More precisely, what Mara can _say_."

"She's a five year old child, Avon," Mirabel thundered. "What can a five year old child possibly say that you need to worry about? She doesn't understand what's going on here. She doesn't even call Blake 'Blake.' She calls him 'Roj'."

"That's not the problem," Avon returned quietly. "They already have Blake. But if he's managed to keep his mouth shut--and if anyone in this God-forsaken galaxy can manage that, it's Blake--Hagrim's people don't yet know we have a base on Ryanec. Mara can describe the base."

"How well?"

"Well enough for them to deduce that it exists."

A strained silence followed his answer, as everyone struggled not to let the note of fear he had struck in their hearts cause them to react unkindly in front of Mirabel. Soolin circled round and joined Deva, their first more-than-momentary contact since before Avon's surgery.

"All right then," Avon addressed the group. "It's time for you to come to a decision as to how you want to handle our present predicament."

"Any sage advice?" Tarrant inquired.

Avon ignored the note of challenge in his tone. "The prudent course would be to clear out, to take the _Zebulon_ into high orbit beyond the planet's defense perimeters."

"Do you think that's necessary?" Dayna asked pointedly.

"I don't," Deva inserted.

Avon flashed him a sardonic smile. "Blake would be proud of you."

"What do _you_ think, Avon?" Dayna persisted. "You know him better than all the rest of us put together."

This time he smiled to himself and replied to himself. "Do I?"

"What did Blake have to say about it?" Vila piped up.

Avon looked almost genuinely charmed by the unexpected wisdom of the question. "Only that he was sure of his priorities."

"What does _that_ mean?" Tarrant asked.

"Can't you guess?" Deva countered.

"It means," said Avon, "that protecting us and the cause comes top of the list--way before such mundane considerations as survival and the avoidance of pain."

"Right," echoed Deva.

Avon gave him a stern look, as if to say "What would _you_ know about it?" Mirabel shuddered involuntarily, trying not to think about what _other_ "mundane considerations" ranked lower than "top" on Blake's list of priorities.

"So what are you all going to do?" Avon asked.

"Why do you put it like that, Avon?" Dayna frowned. "Why don't you say 'what are _we_ going to do'?"

Soolin and Deva exchanged glances; they already knew the answer to Dayna's question. So did Docholli.

"Because regardless of what the rest of you do, _I'm_ staying." Vila chuckled knowingly. Mirabel's eyes widened in wonder. "And I'm keeping Orac," he added. "If the rest of you leave, I'll need Orac to operate the teleport when I go in after Blake."

"You're sure you _are_ going in after Blake?" That from Tarrant.

"I gave him my word I'd come back for him," Avon replied.

"Think he's counting on that?" Dayna asked.

"Actually, no," Avon answered to the added bafflement of the others. His eyes had the mysterious, far-away look of a man reliving some intensely private moment which no one else could ever share. "But _I'm_ counting on it," he concluded, suddenly returning to the here-and-now.

"Well, I _have_ to stay," Docholli spoke up first. "When you get Blake back here, I'll have a patient to care for--two patients to care for, probably."

"And _I_ have to stay," Mirabel said next, "though if the ship is going into orbit, it might be best for Ved and Gar to go with it."

Now _Avon_ _'s_ eyes widened in wonder at _her_. Maybe he'd been wrong about her. Maybe Blake had been right...

"We're staying," Deva announced, without even consulting the woman at his side. "We have total confidence in Blake's capacity to resist whatever his interrogators throw at him."

Again a sardonic smile from Avon. "How about you, Tarrant? Do you have total confidence in Blake's capacity to resist Federation torture?"

The pilot thought a moment, then a mischievous glint crept into his eye. "No, but I have total confidence in your unswerving instinct for self-preservation." He turned towards the others. "If our consummate survivalist here thinks it's safe to remain on Ryanec, I'll wager it must be."

"Well, that settles it, doesn't it?" Dayna concluded.

"Does it?" Vila countered.

"Of course. If the pilot's staying down here, it's a safe bet the ship isn't going anywhere either." She grinned sadistically at the discomfort her statement clearly evoked in him.

"Right," Avon declared, standing up.

"So what's the plan?" Soolin asked him. "How do we get Blake out?"

"First we get ourselves in."

"Eh?" That from Vila.

"Not literally," Avon clarified. "Not yet, at any rate." He inserted the activator key into the computer. "Orac, wake up!" he summoned.

*I was not sleeping. Sleep is a biological function, unnecessary to--*

" _Shut_ up then." For the first time, faint smiles crept onto weary faces--even Mirabel's. Avon continued addressing the computer. "I would like to know if it's possible for you to tap into the main computer at Pacifica--"

*You already know. I've already done so.*

"Don't interrupt, Orac. If it's possible for you to tap into the main computer at Pacifica and direct the computer to transmit a visual and auditory image of what's happening at a specific location within the plant to the main vis-screen here."

*Is there a camera monitoring the location you wish access to?*

"Yes, a security camera."

*Is it under the control of the main computer?*

"Yes, it is."

*Then the answer ought to be self-evident.*

"Is that a 'yes', Orac?"

*Affirmative.*

With a smile, Avon pulled the plug on the testy machine. "Someone please carry Orac back to the main workstation for me," he directed in what Docholli noted was an unprecedented concession to his physical condition.

Deva picked up the computer, and the others took that as a signal to start filing towards the ship's exit. Tarrant lagged behind. "The interrogation chamber?" he guessed in a discreet whisper.

"No," Avon answered, staring straight ahead. "We already know what we'd see there." He looked for a moment as if he were seeing it anyway, then shook himself to break free from the hold it had over him. "Hagrim's office," he declared solemnly.

*****

No, _this_ was the worst. Most forms of pain mercifully faded from memory, but this one never had: ironic, considering that the _theft_ of memory was part of its raison d'etre. And it was every bit as excruciating as he recalled its having been, every bit as excruciating as he'd described to Avon...

It was a white-hot laser knife piercing his skull, slicing through his brain. He wanted to cradle his head in his hands, but his hands were pinned at his sides. He wanted to close his eyes against the blinding, dizzying lights that pulsed in front of his face, but the rhythm of their pulsing had been synchronized with the rhythm of his brainwaves, holding him agonizingly mesmerized by the display even as it intensified the pounding pain. His stomach churned with violent nausea; he retched and gagged to no avail--for the muscles required to purge himself had been paralyzed by drugs, so the sickening sensation continued to climb without limit or hope of relief...

Then he felt the electronic extractor crawling inside his mind, tearing with invisible claws at delicate tissue, disrupting neural connections, scrambling the signals from one part of his brain to another. Out, he thought frantically. Keep them out. Keep them out. Keep them out. A blood-curdling scream filled the space inside the scanner as his will obeyed the order he gave himself--ruthlessly disregarded rapidly multiplying shards of agony _to_ obey it.

He was terrified beyond all description, terrified they'd take his mind again, demolish his memories, maybe even eradicate his knowledge of his own identity. The panic grew more intense than the pain, grew to cosmic proportions, counseled capitulation--lest all that had ever been Roj Blake be swallowed up for eternity by an extinction deeper than death...

Then he thought of the countless supporters of his cause on dozens of worlds--most of whom he didn't know personally and never would--whom he was protecting with his silence. And he thought of the handful closer by whom he did know and love, who loved and trusted him. And of that one shining diamond of a man he loved differently and desperately--and more. And he knew that no price was too high to pay to go on protecting them...

And then the ocean crashed in on him from all sides, crushing him to the floor with the weight of its ice-cold waves. He thrashed against it furiously as it filled his nose and mouth, blind instinct for survival vying with utter confusion over this sudden unexpected departure from the script...

His eyes sprang open to behold Berberon standing in his cell, hosing him down like a caged animal in need of a bath. When the punishing stream was finally turned off, one of Berberon's cohorts bent down and unlocked the shackles on his wrists and ankles. Another tossed him a set of regulation prison garb. "Get dressed," he ordered sharply. "Director Hagrim wants to see you in his office."

As he fumbled to comply, Blake was still shivering, both from Berberon's brutal shower and from his own harrowing nightmare. He had no way of knowing there was a far worse nightmare yet to come.

*****

Lev Hagrim sat behind his desk, studying the file of the most important prisoner ever to fall into his official custody in all his years of service to the Federation. Berberon's exhaustive notes and comments covering the interrogation to this point did not give him much cause for optimism. Unlike some in his profession, Hagrim _didn't_ "like a challenge." He liked it all to be over with quickly and easily. But the present case showed few signs of moving in that direction and would almost certainly demand extraordinary measures. And whatever it demanded, Director Hagrim was prepared to supply. More prepared than the bruised, battered man now being shoved through the doorway into his office could possibly guess...

*****

At the rebel base on the other side of Ryanec, the image displayed by the vis-screen evoked a series of gasps.

"Oh, my God!" Tarrant exclaimed, all traces of his usual machismo absent from his voice.

"Look at his wrists," Dayna murmured, focusing on the deep red gouges left by the metal cuffs.

"Look at his face," Soolin practically sobbed. Deva did let out a sob and covered his own face with his hands.

"I don't think I want to look," Vila said glumly.

"And those are only the bits we can _see_ ," Docholli pointed out.

Avon was white as chalk, his hands curled into tightly balled fists, but when he spoke, it was with an air of authority that Mirabel, standing beside him, had never before heard except from Blake. "All right--ground rules: We look, we listen, we observe. No one gets hysterical. Anyone _does_ get hysterical, they're out of here. Anyone refuses to leave when I say so, I _put_ them out. Understood?" Mirabel found herself nodding mutely with the others. "That goes more than double for you," he spat at her.

*****

The guards escorting the prisoner slammed him roughly into a chair and, at a signal from the Director, withdrew from the room. Blake folded his arms across his chest and glared defiantly at the man sitting opposite him. Though there wasn't a square centimeter of his flesh that didn't hurt, there wasn't an ounce of him that didn't radiate dignity.

From long experience Hagrim expected prisoners who'd been through nearly a time unit's worth of professional, by-the-book interrogation to appear before him beaten and submissive, in a posture of whimpering supplication. This one looked him straight in the eye without a trace of fear.

Hagrim glanced down at the file on his desk and summarized aloud, "Five sessions in 18 hours averaging two hours each. No food. No water. Almost no sleep. Standard drugs. Neural amplifiers. Electric shock." He closed the folder and looked up. "You're a stubborn man, Blake."

"So I've been told."

"They say you haven't even begged for mercy."

"You mean it would have done me some good?"

Hagrim smiled. "That's terribly rational."

"Must be the company I've been keeping again of late."

The smile became a sneer. "We could take what we want from you with the mind scanner."

"So what's stopping you?"

"Our machine isn't working just now. It was damaged during the last tremor. It will take several weeks to obtain the needed parts to effect repairs."

"What a pity."

"We'll still break you."

"Not a chance."

"You're awfully confident."

"I can afford to be. Lacking that mind scanner, there's nothing you can threaten me with."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing at all."

They eyeballed one another. "And what if I find the thing you fear most in the world?" Hagrim asked.

"I'll save you the trouble of looking," Blake answered. "The thing I fear most in the world is bringing harm to the cause I'm fighting for."

The Director chuckled. "Very good. I admire you, Blake."

"I regret to say the feeling isn't mutual."

Hagrim sprung to his feet, hitting the top of his desk with the palm of his hand. The unexpected noise caused Blake to flinch involuntarily. "Even better," Hagrim observed, moving around to the front of the desk to stand close to him. "Why are you here?" he demanded.

"I don't recall being given a choice," Blake said wryly.

"I mean, why are you on Ryanec?"

"Why are _you_?"

The Director sighed. "Do you know what this place is, Blake?"

"Hell?" the rebel leader suggested.

"Do you know what we _do_ here?" Hagrim clarified.

"Mistreat people," Blake replied. "At least in my limited experience. I suppose it's conceivable there are corners in this place where you do other things." Then he rose from _his_ chair, though he hadn't been granted permission. "Look, I really don't give a damn _what_ you do here, understand?"

It sounded convincing, but Hagrim wasn't sure what to make of it. It could, after all, be that Blake was taking the offensive because he wanted to steer the conversation away from precisely this subject... "In point of fact," he said, "I already know where your weakness lies. See, your own pain means nothing to you. Oh, you feel it as much as the next man, that's clear, but you really don't _care_ that you feel it." He paused for maximum effect, searched the eyes staring coldly into his own, and continued. "But the pain of another--" Instantly the shield in front of those eyes came down. "Ooh, reaction already, eh?"

Blake realized his mistake, but it was too late to rectify it. In truth, he'd reacted without even knowing he had.

Now Hagrim was closing on him literally and figuratively. "You regard yourself as a champion of the weak and the helpless. You've stood up to all this because you felt you were protecting others. All right then, I'm going to _give_ you some weak and helpless others to protect. Not abstractly in the name of some noble cause, but immediately and concretely. Here and now."

Without understanding why, Blake felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to stiffen. He backed away towards the farthest wall, looking in vain for a window, convinced that if he found one, he would dive through it to his death without a moment's hesitation.

Hagrim ignored him, knew he couldn't escape, and seemed, if anything, pleased by this sudden undignified display of anxiety. He pressed the intercom button. "Rella, would you ask Troopers Kraaft and Anselm to step in here, please?"

The door opened, and two uniformed men whom Blake did not recognize crossed the threshold. But they were not alone, and he most certainly did recognize their two small companions. As the older of those two companions came running towards him, her innocent young face a picture of joy and trust, his own face went pale, and his knees buckled under him.

"Sit down, Blake," Hagrim said, in a voice confident of victory. "Sit down before you fall down."

*****

Back at the rebel base, pure pandemonium reigned. The minute she caught the first glimpse of her children, Mirabel started screaming and sobbing. She rushed at the vis-screen and tried to pound both Blake and Hagrim with her fists. Soolin and Dayna pulled her back before she could damage the equipment, wrestling her to the floor, where she remained on her knees, cursing indiscriminately as they tried to console her.

Then Avon marched into the melee, looked down at the anguished mother, and thundered, "Out!"

The weeping and wailing come to an abrupt halt as single-minded despair enforced calmness. "Oh, no, please--" she whimpered. "Let me stay."

"Let her stay, Avon," Vila echoed. "They're her children."

"They're my life," Mirabel pleaded, getting to her feet. "Don't tear me away from my life."

"Give her another chance, Avon," Dayna chimed in.

"It was just the initial shock," Soolin added. "I'm sure she'll control herself from this point on."

"It would be heartless to make her leave," Docholli said.

"It would be unforgivable," Tarrant said.

But Avon never heard any of _them_. He was frozen in time five statements earlier at Mirabel's "Don't tear me away from my life", and he was seeing himself back at the spaceport, desperately unwilling to leave Blake. They all expected an argument from him at best and a firm reiteration of his fiat at worst. They got neither.

"All right.  You can stay," he said simply. Relief swept over her face. " _If_ you behave," he added.

"I promise," she choked out.

"Avon--" Tarrant motioned, pointing to the screen. And the group fell silent once more as they sought to pick up the interrupted thread of the events in Hagrim's office.

*****

Blake didn't have to be told twice. He dropped into the chair as if felled by a plasma bolt. Mara jumped into his lap, and he was so numb with psychic shock that he scarcely registered the pain her action sent shooting through his injured groin. "Roj!" she cried. "You came! I _knew_ you'd come! You came to take us back to Mama." Then she saw the marks on his wrists and the bruises on his face. "Were you in a accident?" she asked, suddenly solemn.

Gradually he managed to reclaim his inner bearings and acknowledge her. "Yes--an accident," he agreed distractedly, as his mind raced furiously to understand what was happening. How in the name of everything holy was it possible for Mara and JoJo to _be_ here? Hagrim hadn't found the base-- _couldn't_ have found the base. If the Federation had found the base, Berberon wouldn't have kept asking him where the rest of his people were, wouldn't have kept torturing him hour after hour to find out...

He looked beyond Mara, seeking a clue, _any_ clue, before he really did well and truly lose his mind. One of the troopers was holding JoJo--and JoJo was holding a toy, a stuffed animal. Suddenly Blake flashed on that first day at Mirabel's house--saw himself rushing into the nursery and grabbing the baby and his blanket from the crib. _And saw that same stuffed animal lying in the crib_. But that must mean--had to mean--that JoJo and Mara had been back to the house. _Why? When? How?_

Hagrim was standing over him, a smug expression on his face, saying nothing, allowing it all to sink in, biding his time... Blake turned his attention to Mara. What had she said to him? Something about his coming to take them back to their mother... "Were you and JoJo home, Mara?" he asked in a casual, pleasant tone.

She nodded. "To get Princess and Wuffleby." (For the first time he noticed the doll _she_ was holding.)

"Well, who took you there, sweetheart?" Ice gripped his heart as he asked, realizing the risk, but he had to know.

"Mama," the child answered matter-of-factly. "But then when Vila tried to bring us back with the travel machine--"

"Yes, yes, all right, that's enough, I understand," he tried to hush her. _Understand, my foot! Vila, I'm going to make a necklace of your teeth, after all_.

"Don't interrupt the child, Blake," Hagrim admonished. "Finish the story, Mara. Tell 'Roj' about how your 'bracelet' fell off and how your Mama disappeared before she could put it back on your wrist. Oh, she tells wonderful stories, Blake, about bracelets that make people appear and disappear like magic. What do you think of that?"

"I think, like most children, she has an active imagination."

"And did she also imagine she's been living with a group of people including you and this Vila and a Dayna?" Blake seethed silently. "Want to know what _I_ think it means?"

"Not especially."

"I think it means you have a base somewhere on this planet."

"And I think you're deluded," Blake shot back. "What kind of investigator builds evidence out of a child's fairy tale? So she's heard stories in the community about rebel escapades. It's no secret that I had teleport when I had _Liberator_ and that Avon had it when he had _Scorpio_."

"What about _Zebulon_?" Hagrim asked pointedly.

"Who?" countered Blake, with an expression of utter innocence.

"Don't take me for an idiot, Blake. It's obvious that these children know you. Ergo, you know them. And their mother. By the way, where's their father?"

Blake managed to suppress any outward sign of shock at the question. "I've never met their father," he said truthfully, adding, "I'd understood he died in a space accident."

"What'd you do--kill him?" Hagrim taunted. "Hijack his ship? Did you force him to tell you about this place first, huh? Is that why you're here? Because Malkar cracked under torture and told you what it is we do here?"

The Director's voice rose steadily, and while Mara didn't understand the content of his words, the angry tone frightened her. She began to cry. Then JoJo began to cry.

"Torturing people is your game, not mine," Blake said steadily.

"So how'd you get it out of him then? He wouldn't have _sold_ it to you. I know that." Hagrim was shouting now and kicked at Blake's chair, the jolt sufficing to catapult a myriad of slumbering wounds into vivid agony.

Mara and JoJo wailed louder. Blake swallowed his pain and gently lowered the little girl to the floor, moving her out of harm's way. "Stop it!" he said to Hagrim in a low voice. "You're upsetting the children."

"Upsetting them?" the man repeated. "If that's _all_ I end up doing, you and they can count this the luckiest day of their young lives." Blake's face grew transparent with anguish. The initial shock of simply finding the Malkar children here had temporarily supplanted Hagrim's original threat in his consciousness. Now that respite was over.

The Director turned to the man holding JoJo. "You look tired, Trooper Kraaft, carrying that heavy bundle. Are you tired?"

"No, Sir," Kraaft answered honestly, then caught his superior's look of disapproval. "I mean, yes, Sir," he corrected hastily.

"Well, put the baby in _Blake's_ arms then." Eight simple words, but what sinister menace lurked within the utterance of them! As he hugged JoJo to him, Blake was shaking so hard he almost feared he'd drop him. "Immediate and concrete," Hagrim articulated, reiterating his earlier insinuation. Blake closed his eyes and kissed the child, as much to hide his face while he gained mastery over rising tears as to offer a fleeting moment of solace to unspoiled innocence teetering on the brink of incipient defilement.

JoJo responded to Blake's tenderness by falling silent, and his sister rapidly followed suit. Hagrim backed off a few paces to gaze at the rebel leader cradling the infant, then said in a voice filled with simulated sweetness, "Mara, could I borrow your doll for a few minutes?" The child eyed him uncertainly. "It's all right," he soothed, prying it from her hands. "I won't hurt her. I just want to play a little game with Roj." He waited a minute, and when there was no response forthcoming from his prisoner, called to him in the same duplicitous tone. "Blake--"

The man in the chair looked up to see Hagrim holding out the doll as if it were a puppet on a stage. "Pretty little thing, isn't she?" he said, fingering the strands of hair and glancing significantly at Mara. Then he began to yank at the strands in a grotesque, but unmistakable parody.

"For pity's sake, Hagrim," Blake entreated. "They're just children. Leave them out of this."

"Why didn't _you_ leave them out of it?" the "puppeteer" sneered. "You still can, though. It's still not too late." He twisted the doll's arms behind its back and exerted the sort of pressure that might break a bone or dislocate a shoulder.

Mara started to whimper in inarticulate empathy. Blake cursed under his breath. "Or how about this one?" Hagrim proposed, making an obscene sawing gesture with his finger between the doll's legs. Blake looked ready to explode. "What's the matter? I thought you went for that sort of thing with young children. Or is it just young boys?"

"Please, Hagrim..."

"Oh, I like the sound of that. Let me hear more."

*****

"Bastard!" muttered Avon, his enraged face a mirror of Blake's.

"I don't believe this," moaned the woman at his side. "I know him, knew him. _Thought_ I knew him. He was so kind when Eban--when we thought we'd lost Eban."

"Well, that just goes to prove we never really know anyone," Avon said. "People can appear one way and be totally another."

"Ain't that the truth?" Vila observed, giving him a significant look.

*****

"You want me to beg, is that it?" Blake erupted. "You seemed disappointed earlier that I hadn't. All right, then, I'm begging. Hagrim, for the love of God, whatever it is you're thinking of doing-- _whatever_ it is--do it to me, not them."

The look on the Director's face was one of total astonishment. He let the doll fall to the floor, and Mara rushed to retrieve it. "That's it then?" he mocked. "'Do it to me, not them'? Blake, you are the strangest man I've ever laid eyes on. You want to spare these children? All you have to do to spare them is answer my questions."

"--is betray my people," Blake cut in. "No, I won't. I can't. But you don't strike me as the sort who derives pleasure from inflicting pain. I think you do what you do in a purely pragmatic way--to get results. And if that's so, you may as well stop this insane tactic of yours right now. Because it won't work. It won't change my mind."

"And I think it will," Hagrim maintained. "Their physical anguish and your mental anguish--"

"Will not--I repeat _not_ \--persuade me to open the floodgates to the slaughter of dozens--hundreds--of freedom fighters. No way in hell, Hagrim."

"Then hell it is, my stubborn friend--for all of us." And he reached into his desk and withdrew a small metal instrument. "Recognize this?" A cry tore from Blake's lips. The man was holding the electroshock device responsible for the almost two dozen painful blisters now covering his abdomen, back and sides. "Trooper Anselm," Hagrim said, "take the baby."

*****

"Oh, that does it!" Tarrant exclaimed. "Let's go in there, Avon, now!"

"Just like that?"

"We can kill all 3 of them and be out again with Blake and the children before anyone even knows we're there," Dayna argued in support of the pilot.

"Can we really?" Avon murmured. "And what's to stop them from using the children as a shield?"

"Doing that wouldn't save them," Tarrant declared.

Avon flashed him an ironic look. "No, it wouldn't. Small consolation to the mother, though, I should think."

As Tarrant and Dayna's passion yielded to Avon's logic, Mirabel let out a wail from the depth of her soul. Dayna and Docholli moved to either side of her to offer physical support. Soolin and Deva clung to one another tightly. "I can't look," Vila declared for all to hear, "I'm not looking", and turned his back on the vis-screen.

*****

"Wait!" Blake protested, and Anselm stopped in his tracks. On his feet now, the rebel leader turned to Hagrim. "Look, you wanted to know what I'm doing on Ryanec. All right, then. I came here to meet with leaders of the local resistance."

Hagrim raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware we had one on this planet."

"You weren't supposed to be." _Make it good, Blake. You're running out of options fast_.

"Very well," the Director snapped. "Names!"

"What?"

"Who are they--these resistance leaders?"

Mind racing fast. Battling pain, hunger, fatigue, fear. "I don't know. I hadn't been here long enough to find out when your men arrested me."

A skeptical sneer played on Hagrim's lips. "Right. Just long enough to make friends with Mirabel Malkar and her family. Oh, and how did you _get_ here, by the way?"

_Think_. "I came in on a space cruiser-- _Think_ \--from Obligidor-- _Think_ \--I stowed away."

"And the rest of your rebel riffraff?"

"It's just me. I haven't seen the others since Gauda Prime. We became separated." _Did that sound convincing? Or just desperate_?

"And Mara's account then of living with your 'family' these past weeks?"

"A fantasy. A little girl's imaginary world."

"With a 'Vila' and a 'Dayna' in it? And teleport bracelets? _And_ a conglomeration of flashing lights with a funny voice called 'A Rack'?"

_That's it then. Not convincing by half_.

"Sorry, Blake. You get high marks for effort, but I choose to believe the child." He nodded to Anselm, who resumed his somber trek forward across the diminishing seconds separating JoJo from the pits of hell. "Last chance," Hagrim said, pressing a button which caused the instrument in his hand to emit a high-pitched whine. "Why are you really here? Where are your people? Where is your base?"

"I can't," Blake panted helplessly. "I can't." Then Anselm stood before him. " _You_ can't!" he bellowed with reborn vigor. "Think, Man. Think what you're doing. You're a human being. This is a baby. Have you ever known a baby? Have you ever loved a baby? If not your own child, then your brother's, or your neighbor's, or--"

Suddenly Anselm flinched and jerked back from the child he'd been within centimeters of touching. "You're right," he mumbled. "He's right," he repeated, looking straight at Hagrim. "I'm sorry, Sir. I can't do it."

The Director's eyes grew wide with disbelief, and for the first time, he looked at Blake with personal hatred. Anselm," Kraaft whispered. "Don't be a bloody idiot, Pal."

Anselm swallowed hard, and he was trembling from head to toe--because he knew the inevitable endpoint of the road onto which he had just stepped. Knew, but couldn't turn back.

"I don't think I heard you correctly, Trooper," Hagrim said, offering him a chance to retreat.

"I said I can't do it, Sir. Can't torture a baby."

"I haven't asked you to torture a baby. I've asked you to hold one. Now pick up that child and bring it to me."

"Same difference, Sir," Anselm insisted. "Torturing or helping to torture. We're not--I'm not interrogation division."

"And this isn't the interrogation _chamber_ ," Hagrim retorted. "But I'm still your commanding officer, and I've just given you a direct order."

"Anselm, in the name of mercy--" Kraaft exhorted.

"Just so," the frightened trooper managed to reply--before Hagrim whipped out a gun, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger.

When Anselm's body fell, Kraaft's seemed to inherit its uncontrollable trembling. He snapped to attention and shook at attention, saying nothing, his eyes huge with fright.

Mara became hysterical. She ran to Blake's side and clung to his leg as he shoved her behind him and wrapped his arms even more tightly around her bawling baby brother. "You butcher!" he shouted at Hagrim.

The Director calmly reholstered his weapon. "That one's on your head, too, Blake," he said, nodding at the corpse.

*****

"Oh, God!" Mirabel sobbed, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Oh, my poor, precious babies!" She turned to Avon with sudden resolve. "Send me over."

"What?"

"Put me across. Whatever you call it. Just put me there."

"There?"

"In Hagrim's office." Her voice broke again. "With my children."

"You're mad," Avon sneered.

Dayna gave him a dirty look. "What would that accomplish, Mirabel?" she asked kindly.

"I don't know, but I'd be with them, to comfort them. I'm their mother. If they're going to die in agony, at least let me die with them."

"Then what becomes of Gar and Ved?" Soolin inquired, joining Dayna's unspoken strategy.

"Send them to their father," Mirabel replied. "They're boys and they're older and--" Her voice trailed off. "Send _me_ to my babies," she demanded again.

"No," Avon said firmly.

"Maybe you should, Avon," Vila suggested, caught up in the woman's passion.

"You're as big a fool as she is," the computer tech muttered, and, addressing Mirabel, "The minute I put you over there, you'll spill everything to Hagrim that Blake's spent an eternity in hell protecting."

"I don't give a damn about Blake's suffering!"

"That's my point. You don't give a damn about any of us. Not now. You'd offer Hagrim anything to save your children. You'd deliver the lot of us to him without blinking twice."

"I didn't think of that," Vila mused aloud.

"What else is new?" Dayna threw back at him.

"Well?" Avon persisted. "Going to deny it?"

Mirabel shook her head. "It wasn't what I was thinking when I asked you to put me across, but you're right. It _is_ what I would have done. And I can't even apologize. I would _still_ do it. I would do it in a heartbeat."

"Uh-oh," muttered Tarrant, eyeing the screen, and the vigil resumed.

*****

"Trooper Kraaft, bring me the baby," Hagrim said. Kraaft had finally stopped shaking.

"Stay behind me, Mara," Blake instructed. He knew a second "victory" like the one he'd managed with Anselm wasn't possible, wasn't possible _because_ of Anselm. And he really didn't have the heart to "win" _that_ way again, in any event...

Kraaft walked up to him, stood where his partner had stood, said softly, "I do have children, and my children need their father. Can you understand that?"

"Yes," Blake answered without condemnation. Without absolution either.

"Now hand me the boy," Kraaft commanded, reaching out. "Come on, Blake, you don't want us having a tug-of-war over him, do you? It would be so easy to pull an arm or a leg out of its socket..."

Blake closed his eyes, seeing Mara's doll in Hagrim's cruel pantomime. But Kraaft didn't mean it cruelly, or as a threat. Kraaft was actually trying in his impotent, clumsy way to make things easier. But letting him take JoJo, actually releasing the little boy to the horrible fate which awaited him, felt like ripping out one of his own vital organs. Oh, if only he _could_ have ransomed the child with a kidney, or a lung, or his liver, or his heart...

When Kraaft had JoJo, Blake reached down and swung Mara around in front of him. "I'm scared, Roj," she whimpered, sucking her thumb. "I want my Mama."

Blake's eyes filled with tears, and this time he made no effort to hide them. "I know, Mara," he said. "I'm so sorry, baby."

Kraaft removed JoJo's shirt and held the infant face down on the Director's desk with one hand, while the other hand kept a gun trained on the rebel leader. Heart-rendingly, JoJo was still clutching his wuffleby.

Hagrim primed the electroshock device once more, and as the instrument emitted its high-pitched whine, Blake pulled Mara close to him, turned her face from the sight of Anselm's corpse (and the more awful sight yet to come) and covered her eyes with his hand. "Don't look, baby," he murmured. "Just don't look."

A soul-piercing wail filled the room--and was echoed by the child clutching his leg (and was echoed by the woman watching countless kilometers away).

The wuffleby fell from JoJo's hand... Seemed to fall in slow motion... Took a lifetime to reach the floor...

Damn you, Hagrim, Blake thought. Damn you for all eternity... He tightened his grip on the bundle of sheer terror now trying to break free. "No, Mara," he said sternly. "You can't help him, baby."

"But _you_ can," Hagrim taunted, applying the instrument a second time.

And with those words, fire ignited every pore of Blake's being. His body remembered what JoJo's was just learning--but, God, _he_ was old enough to understand, even to _choose_ it, even to take _pride_ in choosing it--while for JoJo, there was no possibility of comprehending the unprecedented agony annihilating his whole world...

I have to stop this, Blake thought desperately. I can't give Hagrim what he wants, but I have to stop this _right now_. But what would he do one minute from "right now" when he couldn't make good on his promise to talk? Logic told him there'd be nowhere to go "one minute from now."

"Logic says we're dead," he heard a voice echo from the past--and his own shouting back, "Logic's never explained what 'dead' is!"

Hagrim was positioning his device for a third assault; "one minute from now" had become too far into the future to worry about. "Stop!" Blake screamed. "No more! I'll give you what you want!"

Hagrim stepped back from the terrified, tortured infant and switched off his tool.

*****

At the base, Mirabel's cries of despair converted to sobs of relief.

Avon stood, staring at the vis-screen, slowly shaking his head.

"Avon, let's run," said Vila. His words were ignored. "Avon!" he repeated more urgently, grabbing the man's arm.

Avon's eyes never left the screen, but his arm shook off Vila's hand, then _his_ hand seized that other at the wrist and gripped it like a vise. With less immediacy, but equal passion, it might just as well have been Blake's hand, staying his reach for escape as the clock controlling the bomb on Albion ticked down towards zero.

*****

Blake hurried to JoJo's side and examined his wounds, Mara at his feet, looking up at him, eyes begging for more reassurance than she'd ever before needed from an adult in her young life. "He's going to be fine, Mara," the rebel leader said, responding to that need. JoJo's screams continued unabated.

"I'm waiting, Blake," Hagrim called to him.

"First things first!" he barked back. "This child needs medical attention. Have you any Paradol on the premises?"

"Of course," the Director answered. "This is a civilized place."

"Well, get it!"

"First the information."

"First the medicine!" Blake's tone brooked no compromise. "Hear me, Hagrim. You're not going to get a better offer from me, and this one won't be repeated."

The Director raised his hands in a gesture of capitulation. "Rella," he said, activating his intercom, "have a bottle of Paradol lotion sent down here from the infirmary immediately."

"You!" Blake continued, pointing at Kraaft. "Get me a basin of cold water and some clean washrags." The trooper moved to obey as if the order had come from Hagrim himself.

*****

At the base, neither Mirabel nor Avon could take their eyes off the screen. "Thank God, oh, thank God," the woman moaned. "I can hardly believe it."

"I _don't_ believe it," he responded.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, he's acting way too much in control for a man who supposedly just 'broke'."

Uneasy glances travelled around the room. "Pay close attention, everyone," Avon advised. "When it happens, it will be swift and subtle."

"When _what_ happens?" Mirabel cried with renewed alarm.

"And we don't want to miss it," he finished, focusing his gaze on the rebel leader to the exclusion of all else.

*****

Tenderly Blake applied cool compresses to the burns on JoJo's back. The child shrieked at the first touch, then seemed to grow fractionally calmer when his body realized that _this_ touch didn't bring added agony. The quality of his crying was different now, more consistent with a steady throbbing which, while painful enough, at least lacked the constantly increasing intensity and all-encompassing global nature of the hell meted out by Hagrim's torture stick.

As he worked, Blake kept up a steady stream of soothing, non-verbal sounds and reassuring touches to uninjured flesh. At one point, Mara shyly tugged at the baggy pants of his prison garb, and when he looked down, she was holding out her brother's wuffleby. He took it with a smile, enchanted by that show of childish wisdom and placed it in JoJo's arms. At once the little fingers closed tight around it, and again the sobbing lessened ever so slightly.

For those few minutes Blake was almost oblivious to the larger context of the danger still surrounding them all. Then Rella knocked, and Kraaft opened the door just wide enough to take the bottle she handed him.

"It's about time," Blake grunted, grabbing the promise of _real_ relief for JoJo from the trooper's hands.

"It goes a long way, Blake," Hagrim said quietly, as the rebel leader removed the cap and began rubbing the healing substance into the burns.

"I know."

"What I mean is, after you've answered our questions, you can have the rest for your own burns."

Blake spared the Director a contemptuous look and muttered, "Your mercy knows no bounds." Then he turned his back on Hagrim and Kraaft and continued administering treatment.

Finally JoJo stopped crying altogether, his pain now a memory that would only return in incoherent nightmares and a newly-born tendency to expect cruelty, rather than kindness, from the world around him.

Blake looked down at Mara, who was actually smiling again. Looked at JoJo. Looked at the bottle in his hand--and made his decision.

*****

"There he goes!  That's it!" Avon exclaimed, pointing.

"What?" Mirabel asked.

"He's palmed the cap."

"You're right, Avon," Tarrant said. "I saw it, too. But I don't understand it. What possible good will that--?"

"Quiet!" Avon commanded.

"He knows," Deva whispered solemnly in Soolin's ear. "Avon knows what Blake's going to do."

*****

In Hagrim's office, the two Federation men didn't realize that Blake had finished applying the medicine because the rebel leader had kept his back between them and the baby the whole while. Now he casually laid the open bottle on top of the computer console and stepped away from it. "All right," he announced, "I'm finished."

"I'm glad to hear it," Hagrim said. "Now you've no more excuses for stalling. I hope you realize that if that was your intent, it was a futile one. Because I can pick up where I left off at an instant's notice. And if you force me to do that, there'll be no pause for first aid the second time. In fact, there'll be no pause at all. You'll spill it all out over their screams. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly."

"Good, then let's start with your true purpose in coming to Ryanec."

"My true purpose in coming to Ryanec was--wait a minute."

"What now?" Hagrim sighed.

"Where's the cap?"

"The cap?"

"The cap to this bottle," Blake said, picking it up.

"How the hell should I know?" the Director exploded.

"Well, find it!" Blake bellowed in his most convincing command voice. "This is a potentially dangerous substance, and there are small children in this room. Find it now!"

Hagrim threw up his arms in exasperation. "Find the bloody cap," he ordered Kraaft. The trooper began to search.

"Well, don't just stand there, Hagrim. Help him," Blake exhorted, pretending to look himself.

The instant both men were distracted, Blake caught Mara's eye and signaled her with a finger to his lips not to say anything to give him away. He tried in the fraction of a second remaining to him to broadcast reassurance with _his_ eyes, but knew that was a vain hope. She was going to be plunged into terror again, _he_ was going to plunge her into terror again--but better _this_ terror than... _Forgive me, Mara. There's no other way_. And he raised the bottle to his lips and consumed the contents in one breathless gulp.

Hagrim and Kraaft turned at the sound of Blake's body hitting the floor. The rebel's eyes rolled back in his head, and he started to convulse. Mara screamed his name, and when Kraaft tried to pull her back from him, she struggled and kicked like a trapped animal, even biting the trooper's hand. By the time Hagrim retrieved the empty bottle and realized what it meant, Blake had lapsed into unconsciousness. "Damn!" he cursed, then pushed the intercom button. "Rella, get a med-team down here fast."

Immediately the woman's voice came on over the PA system. "Emergency medical team to the Director's office. Emergency medical team to the Director's office."

Hagrim looked down at Blake's body and seethed. If this man died, there was going to be hell to pay.

*****

"Coward!  Bloody coward!" shouted Mirabel at the vis-screen. "He's killed my babies, and he hasn't even the guts to watch."

"You stupid woman!" Avon erupted at her.  "Blake hasn't killed your children. He's probably just _saved_ them by depriving Hagrim of any further motive for harming them."

Mirabel turned pale as the logic of Avon's pronouncement penetrated. "I didn't think--" she stammered.

"No, you certainly didn't," he shot back.

*****

In Hagrim's office, two figures garbed in white came barrelling through the door, pushing a stretcher. They started to load Anselm's body onto it. "No, you fools!" blasted the Director. "The _other_ one!"

"Sorry, Sir," came the timid apology as they matter-of-factly let the corpse drop and picked up the breathing body. "What happened?"

"Suicide attempt, and it mustn't succeed." Hagrim handed over the bottle so the needed information could be gleaned from the label. "Get him upstairs, and get it out of his system."

The stretcher bearers started to move. Hagrim turned to Kraaft. "Take the children back to the nursery."

"No! No! I want to go with Roj!" Mara cried, trying to run after the stretcher. Kraaft picked her up and held her with one arm as she fought helplessly to break free, sobbing over and over again, "Roj! Roj! Roj!"

Hagrim lifted JoJo and deposited him in the trooper's other arm. At the touch of his torturer, the baby burst into a renewed round of terrified tears. "Go on, get them out of here!" Hagrim ordered. "And ask Rella to summon a disposal robot," he added, glancing at Anselm, as Kraaft clumsily lumbered through the door.

When the sounds of the children's synchronized wailing finally faded into the distance, the Director dropped, exhausted, into his chair. "What the hell am I going to tell Sleer?" he burst out.

*****

"Orac, disengage," Avon commanded, and the vis-screen went dark. He spun around to face the group. "Docholli, I want your best prognosis on Blake's condition."

"Well, I'm familiar with the substance he's ingested, of course."

"We all are, Doctor," Tarrant put in. "We stocked it on the _Liberator_."

"Then you know it's intended for external use only. Now, judging by the size of the bottle and estimating that only a very small quantity was actually used on JoJo's injuries, I'd say Blake swallowed close to 250 ml. of pure Paradol. If he survives--"

"If?" Avon echoed.

Docholli sighed. "It depends on how quickly they manage to flush it out of him. They were clearly moving as fast as they could, and I gather their medical facilities are on the premises, so I'd say he's got a better than even chance. And _if_ he makes it, he should recover fully, but he'll probably be unconscious for about the next eight hours."

"Good," Avon murmured.

"Good?!" Deva gasped.

"Stop thinking with your solar plexus," the computer tech retorted. "As long as he's unconscious, they'll leave him alone. And eight hours gives me plenty of time to plan." He turned to the nonhuman in the group. "Orac, access the Pacifica computer for me again--residential records this time. Give me a readout on Unit 5B."

*Unit 5B is a small apartment reserved permanently as guest quarters for visiting Federation dignitaries. It was last used by the artificially generated identity known as Ari Janssen. It is currently vacant.*

"Perfect," Avon said. "Now access the ongoing medical log at the Pacifica infirmary. I want you to monitor the condition of the patient Roj Blake at 15 minute intervals and report your findings to whoever is with you." He looked up. "See to it that someone is--constantly." There were nods of understanding acquiescence from the group. Avon turned back to the cybersurgeon. "Meet me in the Medical Unit in ten minutes. I'm going to need some drugs and your instructions on how best to use them. I'll leave from the ship."

"Leave?" exclaimed Mirabel, whirling around. "Where are you going?"

"Where do you think?"

"Oh, God--" She rushed up to him and seized him by the arms. "Oh, God, Avon, get my babies out of there, please!"

He shook her off so forcefully she almost lost her balance. "I'm going in for _him_!" he thundered. "The rest--we'll just have to wait and see." But as he dashed by the teleport rack on his way out, he grabbed three bracelets, not two...

"And what's _his_ prognosis?" Soolin inquired privately of Docholli. "Just how long can he stay on his feet?"

The doctor shrugged. "If you want a rational answer, I've no idea. As I told him, I've never used that drug before. If you want an intuitive answer, I'd say, as long as necessary and not one minute longer." Soolin's eyebrows shot up in amusement. "They really are, you know, Avon and Blake," Docholli added.

"Really are what?"

"Twins."

With a chuckle, she patted him on the arm. "Excuse me. I want to check on Deva."

"I have to get after Avon anyway," Docholli said and headed for the _Zebulon_ himself.

Soolin found Deva sitting by Orac, rubbing the computer's casing aimlessly, as one might seek solace in the fur of a living pet. He had evidently agreed to take the first standby shift. She bent over from behind and wrapped her arms around his neck. "How are you doing, love?"

He reached up and grasped her hand. "Not so good."

Without letting go, she came around and sat by his side. "You knew, didn't you? You knew what Blake was planning when he palmed the cap."

Deva shook his head. "Avon knew. I only suspected."

"Well, I sure didn't. But I'm not surprised."

"We could lose him," Deva said, his body rigid with tension. "I couldn't bear that."

"We won't lose him," Soolin insisted staunchly. "He's indestructible."

"He didn't look indestructible in Hagrim's office. He looked like they'd made a damn good start on destroying him."

"I know," the woman conceded with a muffled sob.

"I finally understand what Blake was feeling the morning you cleaned out Avon's wound," Deva continued. "Because when I saw how they'd been abusing him, I wanted to be there. I wanted to be there so I could take his place. I really did." His voice cracked, and his whole body shook with a mixture of anger and grief.

Soolin stroked his face and hair. "I believe you, love," she murmured. Then her features hardened into a mask of stone. "Now _me_ \--I just wanted to be there so I could put a hole through Hagrim's black heart."

On the other side of the room, Vila, Tarrant and Dayna were attempting to console Mirabel. "Don't worry," the thief said brightly. "Blake will never let Avon leave without your children."

"Blake may not have anything to say about it," she retorted. "He's unconscious, remember?"

"Well, even so," Vila persisted. "Once Blake's out of there, the Federation will have no reason to harm them. So they'd still be safe until we can figure out a way to--"

"Not harm them?" Mirabel repeated, her voice rising as she got to her feet. " _Not harm them_? Do you think for one minute, after what we just saw happen on that screen, that I want my babies anywhere _near_ the Federation?"

"Sh, don't get yourself so worked up," Dayna soothed. "Gar and Ved need you to be calm."

"Shouldn't they be told what's going on already--Gar and Ved?" Tarrant interrupted. "I mean, I'd be climbing the walls at this point--"

"Tarrant!" Dayna admonished.

"No, he's right," Mirabel said. "I should go tell them something. But what exactly? I mean, how much?" She looked at the others, her eyes pleading for advice.

"Well," Dayna responded, "I don't think you need to tell them what Hagrim actually _did_."

"No, I couldn't tell them that," the mother agreed brokenly. "Not that..." Her tone changed abruptly. "But there's _someone_ I can tell--someone I _have to_ tell. I have to tell him that, and I have to tell him..." _About Blake_. A kaleidoscopic pastiche of images was parading through her mind:

 

_Blake ordering her to follow her three older children downstairs while he remained behind, pushing at the fallen beam blocking the path to the nursery, as the ceiling overhead threatened to collapse..._

_Blake staggering out the door minutes later with JoJo in his arms, his back a maze of blood and broken glass..._

_Blake minutes ago telling that butcher: "Whatever it is you're thinking of doing, do it to me, not them..."_

_Blake shielding Mara when that butcher suddenly turned cold-blooded executioner, and shielding Mara's eyes while his own glistened with tears at the sight of JoJo's suffering..._

_Blake washing JoJo's wounds, cooing to him like a father, tucking his wuffleby into his arms, making the pain go away..._

_Blake swallowing that deadly liquid, pouring it down his throat, eagerly devouring it. Eagerly..._

 

She snapped out of her trance. "I want to make a tape," she declared.

"What?" blurted Dayna.

"Another tape. I want to send another message to my husband."

"Well, I don't know," Tarrant stammered, as Soolin and Deva crossed the floor to join them. "She wants to send another tape to Malkar," he informed the pair.

"Look," Mirabel argued, "the situations's changed. Before Blake was afraid of the Federation finding out he was on Ryanec, but that's not an issue anymore. They already know--thanks to my daughter, they know you're _all_ here."

" _That's_ the truth," Vila granted glumly.

"So there's no longer any reason for me not to tell Eban. And I _want_ to tell him. I want to tell him _everything_. Look, if you don't trust me, you can stand there and watch while I make the tape. I don't care who knows what's in it. I don't care if the whole galaxy hears me denouncing the Federation." She was vibrant with passion now, a bubbling cauldron of it. "I know my husband," she concluded, "and I can promise you this: when Eban Malkar learns what his 'friend' Lev Hagrim did to his son, the rebel cause will have a new convert, body and soul."

And so it was that the spark of defiance which Blake had sought to redirect exploded into a veritable bonfire while he lay in a Federation hospital bed, fighting for his life and unaware of it.

 

III

 

Avon sat on the sofa where he and Blake had rendezvoused that first night, remembering:

How Blake had cottoned to his scheme to trick him into drinking the Pylene-50 antidote...

How Blake had gone to pieces at his mention of the mind scanner...

How Blake had seen through his pretense that the only reason he hadn't fled to Obligidor was because there'd been no Alpha accommodations on the ship...

He'd lived in this place as Ari Janssen for nearly two weeks, but these six hours he'd been back felt like the longer stretch of time. Orac kept updating the base on Blake's condition, and Docholli kept updating him. Blake had narrowly survived his suicide attempt--or desperate gamble for time, in which fate had called the shots without ever pausing to consider the odds--but he was still unconscious and on life support...

"Avon." The sound of his name coming through his open teleport bracelet jolted him from his reverie.

He raised the bracelet to his mouth. "Yes, Docholli, go ahead."

"Good news. Orac reports Blake's breathing on his own. The monitors suggest he could wake up in a couple of hours."

"In a couple of hours it will be daylight again. I want to take full advantage of the darkness and reduced staff. Besides, as far as Hagrim's concerned, I don't _want_ Blake 'waking up'."

"Be careful, Avon."

"But of course. Avon out." He switched off the communicator and checked the two vials he had brought with him from the Medical Unit on the _Zebulon_ , checked the medical laser, checked the extra teleport bracelets. He removed his own bracelet, put it with the others, and pulled on a pair of thin rubber gloves. It would not do to risk leaving Ari Janssen's fingerprints in a part of Pacifica where Ari Janssen had never been...

He stood up and checked out his attire in the full-length mirror on the bathroom door.  He was wearing one of the Federation uniforms Avalon's people had left them after the rescue from Gauda Prime. It didn't bear Pacifica insignia, but given the diminished illumination of night outdoors and the diminished alertness of human beings at night indoors, perhaps no one would notice...

The last thing he checked before leaving the apartment was his gun.

*****

His familiarity with the layout of the entire community was coming in handy now. He encountered no problems during the walk from the residential complex to the main building. Once there, he temporarily removed a glove and used "Ari Janssen's" palm print to gain access to the various corridors, carefully bypassing any that required "color coding", riding a lift to the top floor and strolling anonymously by the occasional predictably oblivious employee who brushed shoulders with him.

Orac had pinpointed the location of Blake's room. Not surprisingly, he was being kept in a single unit, and apparently a nurse had been assigned to remain at his bedside. (No doubt with orders to awaken the Director the minute the patient regained consciousness.) That nurse was the first of Avon's problems--a problem he intended to transform into an asset.

He slipped into the designated room, and the door slid closed behind him. "Any change, Nurse?" he inquired.

"No, Sir, not since we took him off life support," the woman replied, straightening Blake's covers. Then she looked up. "You're not the regular duty officer."

Avon smiled. "No, I'm not."

"Well, this is most irregular. I'm afraid I shall have to insist upon seeing your authorization to be here."

"Will this do?" He reached into his pocket and withdrew his gun, pointing it at her. A startled gasp tore from her lips. "No, no," he admonished. "Don't make a sound. If you cry out, I shall be forced to kill you." But for the moment she seemed too paralyzed with fear to even speak.

Avon motioned her to move with him and assumed a position from which he could get a better view of Blake. Still wearing prison garb and handcuffed by both wrists to the side rails, the man in the bed looked haggard and drawn, his face a mass of bruises and his abdomen-- exposed because of the monitoring equipment--littered with electrical burns. But he was, as reported, breathing on his own.

The problem was the multitude of wires and leads running from various locations on his body into various monitoring instruments. If the readings from these were suddenly altered, the central computer would register that fact and trigger an alarm. It was vital, therefore, that the signals not be disrupted and that Blake not be awakened before alternate arrangements were in place for their continuation.

Avon reached into his jacket and pulled out the two vials of drugs and the medical laser. He loaded the laser with one of the drugs, carefully titrating the dose to the amount needed to induce that degree of unconsciousness which would precisely match Blake's. He laid everything out on the table by the bedside within easy reach, then looked more closely at the cuffs on Blake's wrists. He could see that they were locked electronically and presumed that the button to release them was part of the same control panel that housed the medical monitors, but it wasn't obvious _which_ button that might be.

The nurse, of course, would know--just as she would know which button to press to send a distress signal to the central computer. He seized her by the arm and yanked her roughly to his side.

"You can't do this," she started to protest. "You--"

Her words were cut off as he jammed the muzzle of his gun inside her open mouth. "I can 'do' anything I like," he hissed. "Understand?"

If she'd been scared before, she was petrified now. She nodded vigorous assent as her teeth chattered against the cold metal.

"Now then," he said, "I want you to release the lock on those restraints. I advise you to be very precise and delicate in your movements. Anything imprecise or unexpected--anything such as 'accidentally' hitting the alarm button, for example--and I'm apt to lose control of the firing mechanism on this weapon." He smiled, moving his eyes between her and the man in the bed. "And you're apt to create a very messy splatter all over your patient, which, I promise you, won't look good on your record."

The woman was quaking so badly that she made Arlen in Arlen's weakest moment look like a block of herculaneum. Her hand shook as she reached for the control panel, but her fumbling fingers somehow found and pressed the appropriate button. (When a certifiable lunatic is holding a loaded gun inside your mouth, and you don't want to die, and especially not that way, somehow you manage.) The handcuffs sprang open.

"Very good," Avon said, withdrawing the gun. "Now, grab his feet."

"What?"

"We're going to move him onto the floor, you and I. But be careful not to dislodge any of the wires."

"I don't understand."

"You don't _need_ to understand! Just do it!"

It was awkward--Blake was heavy--but they succeeded in getting him where Avon wanted him. "All right," he continued. "Now unbutton your blouse." She hesitated, beseeching him with her eyes not to hurt her. "Come on, damn it!" he growled. "I haven't time for this little display of false modesty." When she still didn't comply, he reached out and ripped open the front of her uniform himself.

She stared at what he'd done in horror, covering her nakedness as best she could with her hands while silent tears streamed down her cheeks.

"Climb into the bed," he ordered.

"Oh, no, please--" she whimpered.

It struck him for the first time what she imagined his intentions to be. "Don't flatter yourself," he scoffed. "And stop trembling. It should be obvious by now that I need you alive and unconscious."

" _Un_ conscious?" she stammered.

"Yes, of course. Now, lie down!" With an unceremonious shove, he pushed her flat against the sheets, then picked up the loaded medical laser. "Don't worry," he said. "It'll all be over in a minute. And when you wake up, you'll be fine. Well, a little sick to your stomach maybe, but certainly better than him." He pressed the laser against the side of her neck. "Pleasant dreams."

The drug took effect almost instantly. As soon as she was fully under, Avon began the task of detaching each of the monitoring wires from Blake's body and re-attaching them one by one to the corresponding locations on hers. He worked swiftly and efficiently, checking the output readings each time to make sure the variance remained within limits the computer would accept as "normal." He left the neuro-cerebral leads for last--held his breath when the monitor "hiccupped" during that crucial transfer--but a moment later it simply resumed registering the brainwaves of an unconscious patient.

Without wasting another second, Avon squeezed the last remaining drops of the tranquilizing drug from the medical laser and reloaded it with the contents of the second vial. This drug he administered to the body on the floor.

At first nothing happened. "Come on, come on," he muttered impatiently, checking his chrono. Then the body on the floor groaned. "Blake?" he ventured tensely.

Slowly the rebel leader opened his eyes. "Am I dead?" he asked.

Avon smiled with relief. "What do _you_ think?"

His eyes wouldn't focus. Hovering over him were a multitude of faces that refused to resolve into a single image. "That I'm in heaven and it's full of Avons."

"Now there's an unsettling thought. No, Blake, you're still on Ryanec. In fact, you're still at Pacifica, at the foot of your hospital bed." He pulled out a teleport bracelet and snapped it around the man's wrist. "Though we're going to remedy that in short order."

"At the _foot_ of my bed?" Blake repeated. He raised his head with some effort and looked upward, his vision clearing. "Then who's that _in_ the bed?"

"Just an extra unconscious body I borrowed."

"Borrowed?"

"Well, provided--so that the machines don't report that you've regained consciousness. So that Hagrim's goons don't show up to start taking you to bits again. Now, do you think you can stand?"

"Have I a choice?"

"Not much of one, no."

"That's what I was afraid of."

"The injection I gave you to bring you around ahead of schedule contained a stiff painkiller as well as a wake-up potion. I can't vouch for how effective it will be, but it was--"

"The best you could manage in the circumstances," Blake finished for him. Both men smiled. "Give me a hand then." As he came to a sitting position, leaning against Avon for support, something registered for the first time. "Hey, you're yourself again."

Avon sighed. "Who else would I be?"

"No, I meant--"

"I know what you meant. Ready now, one, two--three!"

With a dual groan of effort from Avon and agony from Blake, the rebel leader made it to his feet. "Can't say I think much of your fashion sense, though," he added with an appraising head-to-toe glance.

Avon scowled. "It would appear _you're_ yourself again as well. Now let's go."

"Where?"

"Anywhere the teleport can get a clear fix on us. Over by that nice strong wall you can lean against looks promising. What do you say?"

"Yes--no!" Blake corrected with sudden agitation.

"What do you mean 'no'?"

"I mean, not yet. Avon, listen. Mara and JoJo are here."

"I know."

"You do?" A momentary look of surprise gave way to one-pointed focus on the actual problem. "Well, never mind. If you know, you know we can't leave them here."

"Blake," Avon muttered between clenched teeth, "I have to get you back to the base."

"Not without the children."

"Damn you, Blake! I should have teleported you unconscious on your back. I would have done, but Docholli insisted I had to assess your condition first to make sure you were strong enough to withstand the teleport. Look, I'll tell you what: _you_ teleport back to the base, and I'll stay and get the children."

Blake shook his head. "Not a good idea."

"Why the hell not?" Avon was rapidly losing what little patience he had left.

Blake seemed to be in considerable discomfort despite the painkiller and spoke haltingly. "They've been through a lot. You can't begin to imagine--"

"Oh, I think I just might."

"The thing is, if I'm not with you when you find them, they might not trust you, might not go with you willingly. And if they kick up a fuss, it could draw attention to you. The uniform by itself will probably terrify them, but even if Mara recognizes you--I hate to have to be the one to tell you this, but the truth is--children don't really like you, Avon."

Exasperation covered the computer tech's face. "Well, I can assure you the feeling is mutual!"

"That settles it," said Blake. "I'm staying."

*****

Ari Janssen's palm print opened doors for them again as they retraced Avon's original steps in coming to Blake's room. It seemed a miracle to Avon that Blake stayed on his feet at all, let alone walked on them. As beads of sweat formed on his own forehead, he didn't dare tell the rebel leader that he wasn't alone in experiencing that difficulty...

Day was dawning as they stepped outside the main entrance to the building. Right on schedule, Avon thought. The nursery will be opening soon.

"Halt!" commanded an authoritative voice. "Where do you think you're going with that man?"

Instantly they assumed the posture of a guard escorting a prisoner. Avon even held his gun to the rebel leader's back. "This is Blake, Sir," he answered the officer.

"I know _who_ it is, Trooper. I asked where you're taking him."

"For interrogation, of course. Director's orders."

"I see, very well." They started forward. "Wait a minute." They stopped again. "I don't know who _you_ are. Where's your nameplate? Why aren't you in proper uniform?"

"Shevron, Sir," Avon replied, using his ever-ready alias. "I just arrived at Pacifica last night. I'm to replace Trooper Anselm. There wasn't time to issue me regulation apparel."

"H-mm. I'm surprised there was time to get you here at all."

"Well, I was already at the capital, awaiting assignment off planet when the call came--"

"Yes, yes, all right." Then the officer's eyes fell on Blake's teleport bracelet. In their haste to leave the infirmary, they'd neglected to remove it. "What the devil is that?"

"That? Oh, _that_." Avon played for time while his mind raced furiously. "I'm surprised you haven't seen one before. They're the latest new personal security device. A design of Sleer's, I understand."

"How does it work?"

"Basically, if the prisoner gets away from you, it allows you to control him at a distance without resorting to a firearm. You press this mechanism here," he held up a closed (and empty) fist, "and the prisoner receives a painful electric shock."

"Show me."

"Show you," Avon echoed uncomfortably, then caught just the slightest glimmer of assent in Blake's eye. He stepped back to make sure the rebel leader could see precisely when he pressed the non-existent button and made a great show of squeezing it.

Blake yelped in pain and clutched at his wrist so convincingly that, for an instant, Avon thought he'd really hurt him. And obviously the Federation man was completely taken in. "Very good," he said with a curt nod. "Welcome to Pacifica, Trooper Shevron. Carry on."

Avon and Blake pretended to be heading back into the building they'd just left until the security officer was out of sight, then continued on their way towards the nursery...

Minutes later they were crouching in the bushes some twenty meters from the adjunct to the residential complex where Pacifica employees left their pre-school age children during the workday. The facility hadn't opened yet, but according to "Ari Janssen's" memory of the plant's shift schedule, they'd have only a few minutes longer to wait.

"Well," Avon started by way of passing the time, "were you getting worried?"

"I wouldn't say 'worried' exactly," Blake replied.

"Well, what _would_ you say 'exactly'?"

"I just wasn't sure you'd come back. I didn't think _you'd_ be sure Hagrim's interrogators couldn't break me."

A memory of a parallel conversation flashed through Avon's mind. "I was reasonably sure they couldn't," he said, "but I was _absolutely_ sure they _hadn't_."

Now Blake remembered the other conversation as well. "Why?"

"Orac got the Pacifica computer to transmit real-time pictures and sound via the security camera in Hagrim's office. I saw you there. We all did."

Blake started to nod matter-of-factly, then his head spun around in alarm. "All? Not Mirabel?"

"Oh, yes."

"Oh, God."

"Give it a rest, Blake. You practically lost your life trying to protect her children." His face suddenly contorted in pain.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"You sure?"

"Of course I'm sure." He steered the conversation back to the original topic. "You should have had more faith, Blake. I did make you a promise."

"You made me _two_ promises, Avon, if you recall," the rebel leader said wryly, "to cover _both_ options."

Avon sighed. "Ah, yes, but surely you must realize how much I would have hated to have to keep the _other_ one."

At that moment, a woman approached the entrance to the nursery, escorting three young children and carrying a fourth. One of the three toddlers was Mara. And the infant in the woman's arms was JoJo.

*****

The man who had stopped Avon and Blake on their way out of the main building now emerged from that building's cafeteria line, carrying a breakfast tray. He looked around for a familiar face, found one and approached the man's table. "Mind if I join you, Kraaft?"

"Gator--not at all." He reached across and shook the other trooper's hand. "I haven't seen you in quite a while."

"I've been on night shift. Just getting off, in fact. Thought I'd grab a bite to eat before catching some shut-eye. By the way, I heard what happened to your partner. I'm sorry."

Kraaft's face grew dark. "Thanks. I'm surprised the news got around so fast."

"Oh, everyone on night shift was talking about it."

"Really?"

"Say he died a hero trying to stop the terrorist Blake from taking a baby hostage."

Kraaft's toast fell from his hand. "Is that what they say?"

"They say you were there when it happened."

"Yeah."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So what do _you_ say?"

Kraaft chose his words carefully. "I say he died a hero. And I say Blake was responsible."

"And the baby?"

"My wife and I have had the baby--and his older sister--in our home the past two nights. In fact, Elise just took them over to the nursery with our own two."

"I saw him, you know," Gator confided, sipping his herbal.

"Who?"

"Roj Blake. Anselm's replacement was taking him for interrogation."

Kraaft looked pained. Did that mean Hagrim would drag the children into it again? He detested Hagrim for what he'd done to JoJo--and to Anselm. And for making him help. And he despised himself for not having the guts to die beside his friend. But he'd meant what he'd said to Blake about his own children needing their father. Faced with the same situation, he knew he'd make the same choice again. "I wasn't aware Blake had regained consciousness," he said quietly. "And I didn't know Anselm had been replaced."

"Fellow got in late last night. You'd have been off duty at the time. Brought an interesting device with him from the capital. One I never saw before. Had it on Blake--a bracelet that delivers electric shocks by remote control."

Kraaft's fork stopped midway between his plate and his mouth. "Bracelet? Did you say bracelet?"

"Yes. Why?"

"You fool! That wasn't Anselm's replacement with Blake! That was one of Blake's people!" He leapt to his feet, knocking dishes off the table, causing heads at other tables to turn. "Which way did they go?"

"Well, he _said_ they were going to interrogation, but of course if you're right--"

"Never mind. I know where they went." Kraaft was halfway across the cafeteria towards the exit. "Alert the Director," he called back to Gator, now scrambling to _his_ feet and dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. "Tell him Blake's escaped. Then send backup to assist me."

"Where?" Gator shouted over the din of clanging food carts and breakfast trays.

"The nursery," Kraaft shouted back through cupped hands.

*****

Someone unlocked the door to the nursery from the inside. When it opened, the two children Blake and Avon _didn't_ recognize went dashing inside. Perfect, thought Blake.  "Now!" he whispered.

They lunged in unison like a couple of agile predators--Avon grabbing the woman from behind, clapping a hand over her mouth and his other hand over JoJo's; Blake sweeping Mara up into his arms and covering _her_ mouth.

They dragged their struggling "prey" back into the bushes, with Blake murmuring to the little girl, "It's me, Mara, it's Roj. Don't be scared, baby."

When they were hidden again, he took his hand away and let her see him. She let out a little whimper, tears in her eyes.

"I thought you died," she blurted. "I thought I was never going to see you again."

"I'm sorry about that," Blake said. "It was a trick to fool those bad men. But it's over now, and we're going home. We're going to see Mama and Gar and Ved--and, before you know it, your daddy, too." He cast an uneasy glance at Avon, who was struggling with one hand to plaster a wad of hospital tape over the woman's mouth while he continued to keep his other hand over JoJo's mouth. "Come on, come on."

"I'm trying, damn it! She won't hold still."

"Give me the baby." Avon passed JoJo to Blake and was then able to complete his task more competently, using additional tape to bind the woman's hands behind her back. "It's all right, Mara. We're not hurting her. Don't be scared," Blake continued to reassure.

The door to the nursery opened, and a baffled employee stuck her head out and looked around, presumably searching for the other two children the first two had indicated had come with them. Blake continued to muffle JoJo's frightened wails with his hand, telling JoJo's sister, "Be still, Mara. I need you to be very quiet now, baby, so that lady won't find us." Her lip quivered, but she seemed to understand. She reached out and patted JoJo in a gesture of comfort.

The woman standing in the doorway to the nursery looked at her chrono, looked around again, shrugged and went back inside. With a silent sigh of relief, Avon handed Blake one of the two remaining teleport bracelets and fastened the other one around his own wrist. Blake passed JoJo back to him so he could have both hands free for braceleting Mara.

The little girl kept staring at the figure in black. "Bad," she cried, pointing. "Bad man."

"Him? Oh, no, sweetheart, that's just a costume," Blake laughed. "That's just a disguise to _fool_ the bad men. Don't you recognize him, Mara? Look at his face. That's Avon."

The child tilted her head to one side and scrutinized the scowling, impatient countenance gazing down at her. "Your brother," she declared finally.

"I'm what?" Avon gulped.

Blake grinned at his discomfort. "Apparently Mara's made a family out of our group in her mind. I'm not sure who everyone is to everyone else, but--"

"You and I are brothers."

"Apparently." The scowl deepened. "Oh come on, Avon, I can think of worse designations."

"Well, so can I--I'm sure--if you give me a little more time to mull it over."

"I think we just ran out of time!" Blake exclaimed. Running towards them, gun drawn and pointing, was Trooper Kraaft.

"Base, this is Avon," the computer tech barked into his bracelet, as he pulled out his own gun. (JoJo wailed his head off, but it no longer mattered.)

"Tarrant here," responded the pilot's voice.

"Four to come across on three bracelets," Avon instructed. "Lock onto our signals and--"

"Mara!" Blake screamed. The child had broken free and was running back towards the nursery--and straight into Kraaft's line of fire. Evidently JoJo had dropped his wuffleby during the initial seizure, and no one had noticed until his sister saw it lying there in the grass.

Blake took off after her, and Avon wasn't certain what was happening. "Wait," he told Tarrant. "Stand by."

Mara landed on top of the wuffleby, and Blake landed on top of Mara. Kraaft came to a halt just meters away from them. "Freeze!" he bellowed, aiming and priming his weapon.

The woman in the bushes began to make garbled sounds behind her gag. "Elise!" Kraaft cried out in horror; then stiff resolve settled over his features. "You!" he commanded Avon. "Release my wife."

"Your wife?" Avon mouthed almost to himself. " _Your_ _wife_?" he repeated in sudden comprehension of the possible stakes. _His_ features stiffened correspondingly, and he swung his gun around and pointed it at the woman's head.

Blake looked back over his shoulder and quickly made his own assessment of the situation. "Avon, don't be absurd," he shouted. "It isn't just you and me here."

"You really think he'd be willing to chance it, Blake?" the computer tech called back.

" _I'm_ not willing to chance it! Now let her go!"

With an expression of utter disgust, Avon untied the woman's hands. But it did not escape Blake's notice that he also threw down his gun and snatched JoJo to his chest with both arms.

Elise sprinted across the grass, ripping off the tape from her mouth, and ran into the one free open arm her husband extended in embrace. "The children!" he exclaimed anxiously.

"They're safe. They're inside," she gasped out.

Relief passed over his face, then metamorphosed into renewed severity. He motioned her out of the way. "Now the bracelets," he directed, pointing his gun straight at Blake's head. "All three of them. Remove them, and toss them away from you."

A sudden rumbling noise overhead distracted him. The "backup" he'd told Gator to send had arrived in the form of a low-flying air car, armed with automatic weapons.

"Now, Tarrant!" Avon shouted into his bracelet.

Kraaft's head snapped back at the sound of Avon's voice. In the fraction of an instant before the teleport beam took them, he still had the man and child in front of him at point blank range. The trooper's eyes met the rebel leader's, and Kraaft squeezed the trigger. But his arm mysteriously jerked to one side, sending the bullet wide of its mark.

Less than a minute later, at the very spot where Blake had huddled with Mara, an outburst of automatic weapons fire sprayed the ground.

*****

To the utter astonishment of the assembled group, Blake and Avon materialized on the teleport platform in mid-argument.

"He missed, that's all, I tell you."

"And _I_ say he pulled his shot."

"Well, we'll never know, will we?"

"I _do_ know."

"Sure you do, Blake."

"HEY! ENOUGH ALREADY!" The room fell silent at the uncharacteristic ferocity of Docholli's outburst. "Have you two no sense of occasion?" The latter comment was tinged with a twinkle of combined amusement and relief.

Mara went running into Mirabel's waiting arms, crying, "Mama! Mama! Mama!" The woman swept her up off her feet and smothered her with kisses and tears.

Wordlessly Avon handed JoJo to Blake. Demonstrating, thought Docholli to himself, an _impeccable_ sense of occasion. (The others just thought the computer tech thought himself well rid of an awkward encumbrance.)

Wordlessly Blake handed JoJo to Mirabel. "The second time," she murmured as she took him. "For the second time, you give me back my baby."

"Mirabel, I--" His heart and mind were heavy with the memory of Avon's revelation that she had seen and heard the events in Hagrim's office.

"Hush," the woman whispered, her fingers lightly skirting the border of the long purple welt on his cheek. Then she turned her full attention to her son.

"Blake, I want you in the Medical Unit five minutes ago," Docholli said sternly. "Deva, go to Blake's quarters and pack a bag for him--pajamas, toothbrush, slippers, that sort of thing."

Deva nodded assent, drinking in his commander-in-chief with grateful eyes for one long, lovely instant, then left to do Docholli's bidding.

"This isn't going to be some fast in-and-out," the doctor said by way of explanation.

Blake nodded. "No argument. Just check out the boy first, all right?"

Mirabel had already removed JoJo's shirt. It felt like a spear piercing Blake's heart to witness how she'd gone straight for the right spot. Docholli interposed a gentle hand and inspected the remnants of the injury. "It's healing nicely," he said. "There'll be no lasting damage."

"Not to his body maybe," the mother responded. "What about to his spirit? Will that ever heal? Will he ever trust a stranger again?"

"Should he?" Avon put in.

Blake gave him a withering look, then placed his hands over Mirabel's, as hers held on to JoJo. "Yes," he answered forcefully. "You and Eban will heal his spirit--teach him to trust again. _I_ have faith in _that_."

When Deva left to fetch Blake's personal belongings, Dayna left to fetch Ved and Gar. Now she returned with them, and the two older boys were soon welcoming their younger siblings, lavishing love and attention on them, giving Mirabel a moment alone with Blake. "We have to talk," she said with deep feeling. "I have so much to say to you."

"There'll be time," he promised gently as Docholli pried them apart.

"Besides, you have a tape to finish," Soolin reminded the woman. "Now that you _can_ finish it. Now that you _know_ how it ends."

Avon stood off in a corner by himself, and his color did not look good. Docholli approached him discreetly, out of range of the others. "Avon--"

The man started. "What?"

"Avon, I think maybe you'd better let me examine you."

"And I think maybe _you'd_ better get Blake up to the Medical Unit."

"I was about to. Why don't you come with us?"

"Now, Docholli! Fast!" Avon hissed.

And the cybersurgeon understood. Understood that the computer tech did not want Blake to be presented with another "object of need" to distract him from his own. But as a doctor, _his_ responsibilities were split.

At that moment Deva returned with Blake's things, so Docholli asked him to escort Blake to the _Zebulon_. Mirabel and her family had already left to continue their reunion in their quarters. The others spontaneously trailed after Deva and Blake. Docholli followed them down the corridor and quietly pulled Soolin from the procession.

They returned to the room where he'd left Avon and, just as they reached the door, heard the sound of a heavy clunk. "Three guesses as to what we'll find in there," Docholli muttered, "and the first two don't count."

Soolin yelled "Tarrant!" and Docholli yelled "Vila!" in unintentionally semi-comedic unison.

When the pilot and the thief arrived on the scene, they found the pair who had summoned them next to Avon's unconscious body.

"What the devil--?" Tarrant started.

"Stretcher bearer duty," declared Soolin. "Without the stretcher."

"Eh?" stammered Vila.

"But what happened to him?" the pilot asked in bewilderment.

Docholli looked up from where he was kneeling at Avon's side to check his pulse and answered, "His non-existent soul ran out of reasons to keep his body going."

"Eh?" blurted Vila again.

"Just carry him up to the ship, will you?" Soolin requested.

Tarrant grabbed Avon's shoulders, and Vila grabbed his feet. As they awkwardly made their way across the floor and out the door, Docholli turned to Soolin. "The Medical Unit is on the small side, you know."

"I know."

"So they're going to be roommates for awhile."

"I know."

"And _we're_ going to have the honor of attending to them."

"I know." Then her face went suddenly grim with anticipation. "Oh, joy."

 

IV

 

"Let me get this straight. You had Roj Blake in custody, and you let him escape. Worse than that, you had him unconscious under both human and computer supervision, and Kerr Avon walked in as if he possessed a detailed map of the entire facility and walked out with him--leaving a nurse unconscious in his place and hoodwinking one of your most experienced security officers into believing a teleport bracelet was a torture device."

Sleer's image on his vis-screen as she spelled out his failure in humiliating detail made Lev Hagrim feel more than a little ill. "I can't dispute a word you've said, Commissioner."

"Tell me, Director, are there _any_ redeeming features to this little escapade? Did you, for instance, learn anything of any significance from Blake when you had him under questioning?"

Hagrim was sweating profusely. "I suppose that depends upon what one considers to be--"

"For example, does he, or does he not, have the _Zebulon_?"

"Hard to say." The Director struggled visibly to project some shred of self-assurance. "At a certain point during his interrogation, he claimed to have come to Ryanec as a stowaway on a ship from Obligidor. Of course he was claiming a number of things at that particular point, none of them particularly convincing."

"But your men did pick him up at the spaceport."

"Yes, in the cargo loading area--at a time when one of the cargoes there to be loaded was Pacifica's to you via the _Pegasus_."

Servalan blinked. "You think _that's_ why he came to Ryanec? But he couldn't have known about that unless..." _Unless he found it out from the Magnetrix computer on Helotrix_. But she couldn't get into that with Hagrim now, not with Arlen in the room. "Never mind. Let's explore another angle. Did he know about Pacifica's manufacture of Pylene-50? Is _that_ why he came to Ryanec?"

"How would he have come by such information?" Hagrim asked.

"From the captain of the _Zebulon_ ," Arlen answered, entering the conversation for the first time. "The _real_ one. Before he killed him."

"Yes, but Blake has--or had--Malkar's family with him," Servalan pointed out, "and it seemed to be a voluntary association. Hardly likely if he'd killed Eban Malkar. So let's assume Malkar is still alive somewhere and--what?" She turned back to the vis-screen. "In cahoots with the rebels?"

Hagrim shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I knew the man. He was absolutely loyal."

"By the time the _Zebulon_ arrived on Gauda Prime," Servalan reasoned aloud, "Malkar wasn't on it."

"Unless he was a prisoner," Arlen inserted. "Remember how adamant the bogus Malkar was about not letting you board the ship."

"True, but he would have been anyway, knowing Blake and the others were in those crates."

"True," Arlen conceded in turn.

"Blake and his people boarded _at_ Gauda Prime," the Commissioner continued. "It wasn't they who initially seized the ship."

"Pity Hok and Magda couldn't tell us who did."

Servalan sighed. "Something doesn't add up here."

Arlen took a deep breath and plunged in. "Blake _couldn't_ have known anything at all about the Pylene-50 _before_ he boarded the _Zebulon_."

"Other than that there was a supply of it on this base," Servalan reminded her.

"Right," she glossed over the reminder rapidly. "But the people who actually hijacked the ship--his unidentified allies-- _they_ would have discovered the nature of the cargo they were carrying and _told_ him."

"Arlen, that's brilliant!" the Commissioner exclaimed. "Perhaps we have learned something significant, after all." She turned back to Hagrim. "It's the _rebels_ who were responsible for contaminating that shipment, not some freak accident secondary to tremor activity as your Dr. Janssen hypothesized." And to Arlen again, "Hok and Magda never said Blake was heading for Ryanec."

"Most likely because they didn't know--"

"Most likely because he _wasn't_. Not until _after_ he learned--serendipitously--that the _Zebulon_ had been carrying Pylene-50 from Ryanec. And _that's_ why he went there: following a clue, pursuing a trail to see where it might lead-- _not_ because he knew anything about Pacifica."

"But he knows about it now."

"Does he?"

"He's been inside it."

"Director Hagrim?"

"All he saw," replied the man on the vis-screen, "was the detention wing, the infirmary and my office. If he didn't know then what we do here, he doesn't know now. Of course that still doesn't address the issue of how Eban Malkar and his family fit into the picture, or where Malkar's been all this time if the rebels _didn't_ kill him."

"No, it doesn't," Servalan agreed.

"Or the fact that Blake and his people have a base somewhere on Ryanec," Hagrim added, voicing his own major concern.

"Blake and his people _had_ a base somewhere on Ryanec," the Commissioner corrected. "Surely you don't think they'll be stupid enough to stick around for long, now that they know _we_ know."

"But how could they get a ship off this planet without our defenses picking it up?"

"However they got a ship _on_ without your defenses picking it up."

Hagrim shook his head. "You know, as sorry as I am that he got away from me, I'm not sorry at the thought of his leaving Ryanec. The safeguards Ari Janssen instituted may protect this plant from tremor damage, but they won't do much good if Blake decides to blow the place up."

"Which he might conceivably do even without knowing its true nature," Arlen mused. "After all, he was interrogated there."

"Very well," Servalan granted. "We'll double security at Pacifica for awhile--just in case the rebels _are_ planning to--go out with a bang."

Hagrim grimaced uncomfortably at the Commissioner's parting smile. When the vis-screen faded to black, it was the most welcome patch of darkness he had ever seen.

Back on Gauda Prime, Servalan favored her companion with a different sort of smile. "I should tell you, Arlen, that your replacement will be arriving in a matter of days."

"My replacement?"

"Yes, of course. Someone's going to have to take over this base when you leave."

"Leave, Commissioner?"

"To hunt Blake. My recommendation on your behalf was accepted. Your ship and your crew will be ready for you by week's end." Servalan extended her hand. "Congratulations on your promotion, Space Commander Arlen."

As she gripped the hand held out to her, Arlen breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. Once more--at least for the time being--her secret was safe.

*****

The extent of Blake's injuries was less than what Docholli had feared, but greater than what he had hoped. Certainly it was greater than anyone would have guessed who'd seen the rebel leader in action during the daring rescue of the children from Pacifica. The initial beating at the spaceport had fractured two of his ribs and lacerated his left kidney. Mending the fractures was easy, but the kidney was damaged almost beyond repair: saving it required all of the cybersurgeon's skill and all of the _Zebulon_ 's medical resources.

On top of that, nearly half the blisters Blake was sporting became massively infected--an unfortunate turn of events seemingly triggered by the added stress of the surgery to salvage his kidney. He'd not had the benefit of early treatment with Paradol, as had JoJo, and at this point, stronger measures were required: drainage of each individual lesion (Soolin assisted) and stiff doses of antibiotics for days afterward.

Avon's recovery was far simpler. He'd collapsed out of sheer overexertion, and three time units' worth of rest rapidly did what one and a half would have done at the outset. In fact, Docholli secretly suspected that Avon could have _left_ the Medical Unit in one and a half, could have returned to his own quarters on a "bedrest as needed" basis--but it just so happened Blake was at the peak of _his_ crisis at that juncture: the computer tech might never admit it, but from the way he kept glancing at the other bed, Docholli was certain he was staying there in order to remain close to Blake. And Soolin agreed with that assessment--for twice she'd come into the room during the night and found Avon out of his own bed, standing by Blake's, wiping the sweat from the rebel leader's fevered brow as he tossed in fitful sleep...

Blake would talk in his sleep, too. Over and over he kept mumbling something about a carimbula biting a mutoid. They dismissed it as some bizarre recurring nightmare, a product of delirium...

It was less easy to ignore his repetition of the word "wanta." He seemed to be putting so much passion into it. " _What_ , Blake?" they would ask, bending over him. " _What_ do you want to do?" But they never received a coherent answer.

Three days later, when the fever broke and the dosage of post-surgical pain medication had been drastically cut back, Blake returned to full consciousness. As he opened his eyes, the first words out of his mouth were: "I've got it! I know how we're going to deal with Servalan's new super-mutoids."

*****

On the same day that Avon rescued Blake from Pacifica, Mirabel completed the tape she'd made for her husband. Deva sent it for her (she still had no idea where), and while she waited for an answer, she turned her full attention to her traumatized children.

JoJo couldn't articulate anything about his experience, of course, but he clung to her more than ever before, cried more easily, reacted more strongly to random noises and wouldn't let anyone _except_ her and his siblings near him--not even Dayna.

Mara, on the other hand, spoke openly and frequently of the events at Pacifica, of how "bad men" had hurt JoJo and scared her, of how Roj had tried to protect her from the bad men ("like Daddy would"), of how he'd "made JoJo's boo-boo all better", of how he and "his brother" had saved them from that terrible place... Mirabel knew with the certainty of a mother's intuition that Mara was going to be all right.

Yet another debt of gratitude she owed to the man lying injured above them on what used to be her husband's ship... She smiled at the thought of what a long distance she had travelled in her mind since the day she'd first accused him of stealing that ship, punctuating her accusation with a slap across the face in an outburst of righteous indignation...

On the same day that Blake turned the corner (and Avon finally "demanded" to be released from the Medical Unit), a reply came from Eban Malkar: "I feel like a galaxy-class idiot," it said. "Thank you, my love, for taking the blinders from my eyes. And thank God and Blake that I still have my family intact to make amends to. Come to me, Mirabel. Bring my boys and sweet Mara. We've lost what we thought was our perfect world. Now we've got to start learning to live in the real one."

*****

"Gar!  Mara! Come on, hurry up. How much more can you possibly have to take with you?"

"You'd be surprised, Mother," Ved informed her, burping his baby brother as he spoke. "In addition to what Vila brought back that day he went across, they've been hoarding all sorts of discarded odds and ends, creating make-believe models of guns and bombs and--"

"I'm not sure I approve of that," Mirabel mused. _Then again, maybe it's healthy under the circumstances_.

The two younger children emerged from what had been the family's living quarters, their arms full of assorted "gadgetry." Their mother picked one item out of Mara's pile at random. "And what might this be?"

"It's a medical laser, like Doc Lee's," the girl said solemnly. "So I can make Princess all better." She nodded towards the head of her doll, peering out from a deep pocket in her dress. It seemed a miracle that she still had it with her. Perhaps it was a good omen for the future.

"Did I hear someone take my name in vain?" teased the voice of the cybersurgeon, as he suddenly appeared. "Can I help anyone carry anything to the ship?"

"No, we're fine," Mirabel said, with a smile. "I suppose this is as good a time as any to say goodbye."

"No need," declared Blake, approaching with the rest of the group behind him. "Docholli's going with you."

"What? Why?" The woman looked bewildered. Then, "Oh my God, it's not JoJo, is it? You haven't found something else wrong with him that's going to require medical attention during the trip?"

"No, no, no," Blake said quickly.

"JoJo's fine," Docholli confirmed. "I'm going with you because I'm going home."

Mirabel did a double take. "Home? You mean to say you _live_ on the planet where Eban has been all this time?"

The doctor nodded. "I was only here with Blake temporarily--for the purpose of doing that surgery on Avon. That's all finished now, so I'm heading back to the people I usually live and work with."

"You know the people who have Eban?"

"Very well. And I'll tell you all about them and all about the place we're going on our way there."

Mirabel threw her arms around Docholli, but looked past him to Blake and mouthed, "thank you."

Blake caught Avon's eye; Avon scowled.

"I do have some things of my own still in my quarters, though," Docholli said.

"Go right ahead," Tarrant urged. "We've an hour yet before take-off. And we still need to decide who else is going to make this run with me."

Blake surveyed the group. "Any volunteers?"

"Not me," Vila said at once. "I've gotten used to having my feet on Ryanec-almost-Firma."

"Don't get too used to it, Vila," Avon advised, with a significant look in Blake's direction. "Something tells me none of us will be here for very long once the _Zebulon_ gets back."

"I'll go with you, Tarrant," Dayna offered.

"All right!" exclaimed Ved. Then he turned red as everyone looked at him. Mara was beaming her approval of the proposed new crew member as well.

"Better go pack what you'll need," the pilot suggested by way of accepting the proposal. He was as pleased as Ved with Dayna's decision since, on the return trip, there would be just the two of them...

"Ved, will you be okay looking after your brother for awhile?" Mirabel asked. The boy nodded in the affirmative, kissing JoJo on the top of the head as he rocked him. Satisfied, she turned to the rebel leader. "You promised me we'd have time to talk."

"Yes, of course." He put a guiding arm around her shoulders. "Excuse us, everyone."

"You're excused," Soolin muttered under her breath--though to Deva, standing next to her, the tone of it sounded more like "you're _not_ excused"...

"Where?" Blake inquired as they turned into the next corridor.

"Your quarters," Mirabel stated in a tone that left no room for debate.

As they entered a moment later, he pressed the panel on the wall to lock the door behind them. Then he pressed a second panel to insure that the security cameras couldn't scan the room.

Aware of how atypical that behavior was for him, Mirabel felt briefly uneasy--till she reminded herself that he was only responding to her lead, and that there was nothing at all "atypical" about Blake being able to read people...

They sat down together at the edge of his bed. For either of them to have used the only chair in the room would have put more distance between them than the situation seemed to call for.

"You look well," Mirabel started.

"I feel well," Blake responded.

"It must have been awful--the part we didn't see."

"Not as awful as the part you did."

"God, you mean that, don't you?" She looked away, too mortified to face him. He reached out, took her chin in his hand and turned her towards him once more. "I owe you--a confession," she breathed.

"No, you don't."

"Yes, I do, so please don't make it any harder for me." His hand fell away in acquiescence to her wishes. "Once I knew my children were involved, once I saw them there, I didn't care _what_ happened to you."

"I understand."

" _You_ cared what happened to _them_."

"Very much."

"I'm so ashamed of myself."

"No need to be." All the while his eyes were fixed on hers, and she couldn't detect a hint of judgment in them.

"You were acting out of responsibility for so many," she exclaimed. "I wasn't capable of seeing beyond two."

"Not many are when it's their own," Blake said gently. "Perhaps that's why I've decided never to have my own."

Mirabel smiled. "But, in a way, they're _all_ your own."

"In a way."

She took a deep breath. "I learned something else from Hagrim's interrogation of you. I learned that Eban did know the nature of the cargo his ship was carrying."

"I never doubted that."

"You didn't push it."

"You weren't ready to hear it."

She shook her head in wonder. "Are you always so wise?"

Blake laughed. "Not according to Avon." The room fell suddenly silent. He took her hand. "So--now all the unacknowledged truths are out in the open at last."

"Not quite all," Mirabel declared. "There's still one more, isn't there?"

"Yes."

"What do you want to do about it?"

"What do _you_ want to do about it?"

They rose in unison. He pulled her close to him. She wrapped her arms around his back, and their lips came together. It was a long, deep, satisfying kiss in which the passion of the flesh became a conduit for the passion of the soul. When it ended, she laid her head against his chest, and he ran his fingers through her thick, soft ebony hair. With a sigh, he whispered, "I've wanted to do that ever since--" Sudden silence. She pulled back and looked at his face, and they both dissolved in giggles. "I don't know, but for a long time," he finished.

She smiled up at him. "So have I." They broke apart, then came together again by clasping hands. "It's all we can have, though. You do realize that?"

"Of course," Blake said, and, as if to underscore the point, released both the scan shield and the door lock. "You're going to Eban, which is as it should be. And I'm going after the latest piece of Federation mischief--which is also as it should be."

"I'll never forget you, Roj Blake," she swore hotly.

*****

"Blake," said Soolin, standing in the open doorway, "it's time."

"Thank you," he acknowledged, then turned back to the other woman and offered her his arm. "Shall we?"

Soolin followed them down the corridor to where the ship was waiting and watched as he disappeared inside with her. The children had already boarded with Tarrant and Dayna. Docholli was still saying goodbye to Vila.

Deva moved up beside her. "What's wrong?"

She made a dismissive hand gesture. "Nothing."

He forced her to look at him. "Hey, this is me--your best friend. Don't give me 'nothing'."

"All right. If you must know, I walked in on Blake with Mirabel."

Deva's face went through a series of puzzled contortions. "Walked in on--? You don't mean--?"

"Yes and no," Soolin answered. "Mostly no."

"But it hurt."

"Yes and no." A small chuckle. "Mostly yes."

Deva put his arm around her, and she leaned into the comfort of his embrace automatically. "May I point out," he whispered tenderly, "that _she's_ leaving and _we're_ staying?"

Soolin patted his impishly grinning face. "Bottom line?" she murmured.

"Bottom line," he confirmed.

Blake re-emerged from the ship and went to Docholli. The two embraced. "I never imagined," the cybersurgeon said, "on the day I bid farewell to Avalon that I would one day find it just as difficult to bid farewell to you. My heart goes with you, Son."

"And mine with you," Blake replied.

Docholli moved on to Soolin. "Best of everything, Partner," he said, with a wink. "Battle patching's all yours now." And to Deva, "That's one rare prize you've won yourself."

"Don't I know it," the man responded.

Then Docholli walked up to Avon and, before the computer tech could prevent it, had him in a bear hug. "Must you?" Avon hissed in ritual protest.

"Yes, I must," the doctor answered solemnly. "Privilege of age. Humor an old man."

To Avon's added consternation, Blake and Vila exchanged glances of merriment.

Docholli finally gave his victim space to breathe. "Take care of yourself," he exhorted. "And keep an eye on him." A barely perceptible head movement indicated he meant Blake.

"But of course," Avon declared pompously. "I _always_ keep an eye on him. Self-interest requires it."

"But of course," Docholli echoed with a twinkle, then disappeared inside the ship.

They went back to the main room and watched on the vis-screen as the _Zebulon_ departed Ryanec 5.

"It does happen, you see, Avon," Blake said quietly.

"What does?"

"Someone staying with me a short while and then leaving--alive."

Avon smiled. "Exception that proves the rule," he proclaimed. "There's a first time for everything."

The rebel leader favored him with a fleeting, facetious stare, then pivoted to catch Vila, Deva and Soolin in the act of observing them. "Well, why's everyone standing around doing nothing?" he bellowed. "Have you forgotten there's a war on? We've Servalan's plans for a new line of mutoids to mess up."

Under Blake's excited prodding, each of them scrambled to a work station to look busy.

Avon hung back, fingering Ensor's brainchild. "The question, Orac," he murmured, shaking his head, "is whether there'll ever be a _last_ time."


End file.
